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LIFE BEYOND DEATH 



LIFE BEYOND DEATH 

BEING A REVIEW OF THE WORLD'S BELIEFS ON 
THE SUBJECT, A CONSIDERATION OF PRESENT 
CONDITIONS OF THOUGHT AND FEELING, 
LEADING TO THE QUESTION AS TO 
WHETHER IT CAN BE DEMON- 
STRATED AS A FACT 

TO WHICH IS ADDED 

AN APPENDIX CONTAINING SOME HINTS AS TO 
PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AND OPINIONS 



BY 

MINOT JUDSON SAVAGE, D.D. (Harvard) 
U 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
NEW YORK & LONDON 
Gbe Knickerbocker ipress 

1903 



• -33 



CoryRiGHT, 1899 

BY 

MINOT JUDSON SAVAGE 

Set up and electrotyped, November, 1899 

Reprinted, December, 1899 ; January, igoo ; July, 1900 ; April, 1901 ; May, igoa ; 

November, 1903 






Ube fotfcfeerbocfcer press, View jporft 



TO PHILIP HENRY SAVAGE 

FEBRUARY II, 1 868 JUNE 4, 1 899 



My dear Phil: 

As you are the first one of our family circle 
to go into the "Life Beyond Death" it seems 
peculiarly fitting that I should let my love have 
its way, and dedicate to you this, my attempt to 
find the entrance to that mist-covered harbour 
of which all the world has dreamed, and which 
the true lovers and high thinkers of every age 
have sought. I am grateful, even to tears, for 
our thirty-one years together — even though that 
should be all. But let my pride in you have 
way for a moment, while I set down a record 
which I believe the world can rarely match. 
Never was finger of father or mother laid on 
you except in the way of caress. Never was 
there one hour of misunderstanding between us. 
Never did you . give us one hour of anxiety. 
Never did you speak a word to us, nor we to 

iii 



iv To Philip Henry Savage 

you, which we would now forget. One more 
thing let me say. Never knew la braver going. 
Never read I of one. From perfect health — 
as we all supposed — -you went into the shadow 
in full strength, and inside of three days. 
With a poetic promise fully recognised ; with 
most of those you loved, including her you were 
to marry, by yottr hospital bedside ; with worldly 
prosperity in sight ; with all the thrilling life 
and hope of youth, — you faced the shadow with 
all tenderest words of love for all of us, but 
with not one selfish syllable on your lips. Yoti 
did not even complain that it was hard to turn 
away from all you loved, for a future con- 
cerning which you claimed to know nothing, 
and in which you had no strongly assured 
faith. " / do not need any more help ; I can 
go on alone." With such words, you stepped 
over the border, and found — as I fully believe 
— a clearer light and a grander life. I shall 
do better work henceforth becatise you are 
one of the '"''great cloud of witnesses." And, as 
I dreamed the other night, when my time comes 
to go, I shall look for your face as the first to 
break through the mist, as I cross the bar, and 
come to anchor in the world-desired haven. I 
believe you will henceforth watch over us, help 
us as you are able, be preparing a place for us; 



To Philip Henry Savage v 

and the going will be easier, for us who hold you 
in our hearts, because you are there. God bless 
you, my boy, till the eyes which I closed I see 
open again and looking into mine. 

Lovingly, 

FATHER. 

Signed at the town of Billerica, Massachusetts, every spot 
of which was dear to the passionate Nature-lover and 
Nature-poet. 

September, i8gg. 



PREFACE 

A NEWSPAPER article which I came across the 
other day suggests the necessity for the kind 
of preface which is offered to the reader. The 
writer was a physician, and so might presumably 
claim to understand the " scientific method." The 
position he assumed was that there was no possi- 
bility of scientific demonstration in the matter of 
psychical research. The argument was meant to 
be fair and, by many, might be regarded as con- 
clusive. As some parts of this book will be open 
to this kind of attack, I wish to state the writer's 
argument (of course in my own words, but I hope 
fairly), and then see if it is valid. 

He claimed that nothing could be demonstrated 
scientifically unless the matter involved could be 
submitted to satisfactory tests by anybody, at any 
time, and with the certainty of immediate uniform 
results. This is undoubtedly true of the scientific 
method when dealing with inanimate forces or 
things. But is it true in dealing with living beings 
— with men and women ? 

I have been accustomed to think and say for many 
years that " the scientific method " is the only 
method of knowledge. What does this mean ? It 
means that whatever one may feel or think or 



viii Preface 

believe or regard as probable he does not know unless 
it is capable of demonstration in accordance with 
the scientific method. 

Let us note the steps of progress in the scientific 
method so that this matter may be made clear to 
any intelligent reader whether scientific or not. 

i. The first step is observation. I open my eyes 
(whether outer or inner) and see a fact. This 
proves nothing beyond my own personal impression. 
If I am colour-blind or ignorant or prejudiced, my 
seeing may be incorrect and so not correspond to 
any reality. 

2. So there must be repeated observation and 
corroborative observation on the part of others. 

3. Then, after a number of facts appear to be 
satisfactorily determined, a tentative theory may be 
formed in accordance with these facts. This is what 
science means by the " process of induction." But 
this theory is always open to revision, provided 
other facts are discovered which are not in accord 
with the theory. The " law of parsimony " de- 
mands also that the nearest and easiest theory 
which will explain the facts shall have the prefer- 
ence. That is, a strained or far-fetched theory 
must not be dragged in where the facts can be ex- 
plained by an easier or more " natural " method. 

4. When a large number of facts are satisfactorily 
established and all or most of them can be most 
easily explained in the light of some particular 
theory, that theory is regarded as scientifically 
established. This, for instance, is the case to-day 
in regard to the Copernican theory of the universe. 



Preface ix 

The theory of evolution and the nebular theory are 
also cases in point. It is conceivable that either of 
these might be overthrown or essentially modified 
by the discovery of a sufficient number of new facts 
which could not be explained in accordance with 
them. Professor See, for example, is calling in ques- 
tion certain phases of the nebular theory. But the 
facts must be many and important before a man is 
justified in demanding that a well-established theory 
be given up. He must be sure that he is not misin- 
terpreting his facts. 

Now I submit that this, the scientific method, can 
be followed in observing and proving anything which 
is real and which touches us, and so comes into the 
field of observation. But while a man can command 
the action of certain forces and order the conduct of 
his observations in his laboratory ; or while he may 
count on the absolute uniformity of the motions of 
the heavenly bodies, there are other facts, and those 
of far greater importance, which he cannot treat in 
this way, although he may still be true to the scien- 
tific method. You cannot order people round, as a 
chemist may his elements, and yet facts concerning 
people may be scientifically demonstrated. The 
same thing is true of the people in the other life — 
provided there are any. It is conceivable that " a 
spirit " may be present and communicate in certain 
circumstances. Identity even may conceivably be 
established. And yet the precise experiment one 
may not be able to repeat at will, for the simple but 
satisfactory reason that, ex hypothesi, another will is 
concerned ; the person may not be present the next 



x Preface 

time; he is not under orders; and the conditions 
may not be capable of duplication by anybody who 
happens to come along. 

The Society for Psychical Research is engaged in 
the task of investigating a large body of facts, what- 
ever may ultimately be regarded as the explanation 
of them. Several different explanations have been 
offered. The principal ones are these : 

i. Fraud. 

2. Auto-suggestion : that is, that the sitter unin- 
tentionally " gives himself away" — as the phrase 
goes. He unconsciously imparts the information 
which so astonishes him when he gets it back again. 

I have seen a great deal of both of these. 

3. That the facts are the work of the subcon- 
scious mind of either the sitters, the psychic, or all 
together. 

4. Mind-reading or telepathy. 

5. The "spirit " theory. This means, of course, 
that persons who have " died " and are now in the 
life which is ordinarily regarded as the abode of 
silence and invisibility can and do (at least occa- 
sionally) manifest their presence and communicate 
their thoughts. 

Now, in the first place, it can be settled as to 
whether any of these claimed facts are facts. Then, 
in the second place, it can be determined as to 
whether any one of these theories can explain the 
facts. If it can, then it would be provisionally 
established as a scientific hypothesis, in precisely 
the same sense that the Copernican theory of the 
universe is established, and with as scientific a 



Preface xi 

validity. Like that, it would still be liable to 
question or revision, provided new facts should 
arise which it could not find place for. And con- 
ceivably it might be displaced altogether, provided 
a more satisfactory theory should present itself. 
But meantime it would rightly claim the intelligent 
acceptance of all educated and free minds. 

I submit then to all competent thinkers that the 
psychical problems can be scientifically investigated, 
and that a true scientific theory concerning them can 
be framed and verified. 

M. J. S. 

September 16, 1899. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — Primitive Ideas i 

II. — Ethnic Beliefs 19 

III. — The Old Testament and Immortality . 41 

IV. — Paul's Doctrine of Death and the 

Other Life 63 

V. — Jesus and Immortality . . . .88 

VI. — The Other World and the Middle 

Ages 111 

VII. — Protestant Belief Concerning Death 

and the Life Beyond .... 133 

VIII. — The Agnostic Reaction .... 156 

IX. — The Spiritualistic Reaction . . .178 

X. — The World's Condition and Needs as 

to Belief in Immortality . . . 200 

XI. — Probabilities which Fall Short of De- 
monstration 222 

XII. — The Society for Psychical Research 

and the Immortal Life . . . 245 

XIII. — Possible Conditions of Another Life . 271 

Appendix. — Some Hints as to Personal Experi- 
ences and Opinions . . . 295 



THE MYSTIC HOPE. 

What is this mystic, wondrous hope in me, 
That, when no star from out the darkness born 
Gives promise of the coming of the morn ; 
When all life seems a pathless mystery 
Through which tear -blinded eyes no way can see ; 
When illness comes, and life grows most forlorn, 
Still dares to laugh the last dread threat to scorn t 
And proudly cries, Death is not, shall not be t 

I wonder at myself ! Tell me, O Death, 
If that thou rul'st the earth ; if " dust to dust " 
Shall be the end of love and hope and strife, 
From what rare land is blown this living breath 
That shapes itself to whispers of strong trust 
And tells the lie — if 't is a lie — of life ? 

m. y. 5. 



LIFE BEYOND DEATH 



PRIMITIVE IDEAS 

IT is said that, when Henry D. Thoreau lay- 
dying in Concord, his friend Parker Pills- 
bury sat by his bedside ; and he leaned over, 
and took him by the hand, and said, " Henry, 
you are so near to the border now, can you see 
anything on the other side ? " And Thoreau 
answered, " One world at a time, Parker." 

It has seemed to a great many that this an- 
swer is wisdom. I cannot so take it. The 
human race never will surrender this quest 
until, one way or the other, it is settled. We 
cannot take one world at a time. Why ? 
There are two or three answers which I would 
suggest. 

In the first place, on the reply to this query, 
"If a man die, shall he live again?" depends 
our answer to the question : What kind of a 



2 Life Beyond Death 

being is man ? What am I ? The Greek wise 
man said that the most important item of all 
knowledge was to know one's self. We can- 
not know ourselves until we know whether the 
grave is the end of us or not. Is there some- 
thing in us that overleaps the gulf we call 
death, that continues through the dissolution 
of the body ? Do we end when what we call 
life ends, or do we simply keep on ? Is Death 
the extinguisher of life, or is he the great gate- 
opener, letting us out into larger fields, into 
wider and grander opportunities ? Until I 
know whether or no there is something in me 
that Death cannot touch or destroy, I cannot 
know what sort of a person I am. / 

In the second place, until I can find out what 
sort of person I am, how am I going to de- 
termine an answer to the question as to how I 
ought to live ? The kind of life appropriate 
to a bird or to an animal of any sort depends 
entirely upon the nature, the faculties, the 
possibilities, of that bird or animal. What it 
can become or accomplish, it ought to become 
or accomplish, we say. Now what can man 
do ? What can man become ? What can he 
accomplish ? 

We cannot answer that question until we 
can find out approximately what sort of being 



Primitive Ideas 3 

man is. Shall I live simply as an animal? 
Not at my peril, if I am something else than 
an animal, something more than an animal. 
Is wealth or fame or pleasure the appropriate 
end and object of human life ? That depends 
upon what a man is, what a man is capable of 
doing and being. So, for the sake of finding 
out what kind of life a man ought to lead, we 
need to know whether he is a soul or whether 
he is only a body. 

The whole question of the emphasis of mor- 
als is to be determined right here. If I decide 
that, when I come to the grave, I am to lie 
down in an age-long sleep, that does not make 
right wrong, or wrong right : it does not there- 
fore become proper for me to steal, or to cheat, 
or to lie, to take advantage of my neighbour. 
But where I shall place the emphasis of my 
moral life, and how much I shall think it worth 
my while to try to accomplish or to become, — 
the answer to these questions depends vitally 
upon my opinion as to whether my life leads 
out into something beyond the grave or not. 

To illustrate : If I know that, after I have 
lived ten years here, that is the end of me, one 
kind of life would be appropriate to me. If I 
know that at the end of ten or twenty years 
I am going suddenly to be transferred to some 



4 Life Beyond Death 

other country, to some other kind of life, in 
the midst of other kinds of people, have other 
ambitions and cares, and that the life I am 
leading here is of no particular account except 
as a preparation for that, and that that is to 
continue indefinitely, do you not see that it 
changes the whole problem as to where I am 
to place the emphasis of my life ? 

One other point I wish to suggest : I believe 
that the solution of our industrial and social 
problems depends more than almost anything 
else upon our answer to this question as to 
what is the nature of man, and what is his des- 
tiny. Those who have made a careful study 
of these questions already warn us that the 
Socialists are saying : 

" It used to be the Church and the nobility, now it is 
the Church and the bourgeoisie j and in either case they 
are telling us to be contented with the lot in which 
Providence has chosen to place us, and to look for our 
consolation in some other life. That is what they have 
always been telling us. Now we do not believe in any 
other life, and we propose to have our share of the good 
things of the world as they go." 

That is only Paul's logic. "If the dead rise 
not," Paul says, "let us eat and drink ; for to- 
morrow we die." That is what the Socialists 
are saying. If there is no future life, we are 



Primitive Ideas 5 

going to claim our share of the good things 
here. And if this earth is only a larger dog- 
kennel, if we are shut in under " this inverted 
bowl men call the sky," and, when we get 
through here, that is the end of it, — if that is 
true, tell me why some fortunate member of 
the canine race should sit and guard a pile of 
bones a thousand times larger than he can eat, 
while I simply whine and starve ? 

If there is another life, if this is only prepara- 
tion ; if we are not bodies, but souls, and are 
cultivating our souls through the discipline 
of life's experiences here for that infinite career 
which opens through the gateway of death, — 
then that is one thing. It may be worth while, 
then, to be poor ; it may be worth while to 
want, to suffer, to go through any experience, 
so I be true to myself. But, if the time ever 
comes when the great masses of the world 
have made up their minds that all there is to 
human life is right here, then look to your 
social order ; and, with Paul's word as preced- 
ent, they can demand their little share of some- 
thing to eat and drink before the to-morrow 
comes when they are to die. / 

These are some hints as to the reasons why, 
in my opinion, we cannot take one world at a 
time. The question as to whether there is 



6 Life Beyond Death 

another world makes all imaginable difference 
as to what we shall think about, and how we 
shall use, this one. 

One or two other preliminary thoughts need 
to be touched on briefly. There are large 
numbers of people who tell us that this is a 
problem impossible of solution ; that we can 
hope and dream as much as we please, but we 
shall never be able to know. I have had this 
told me, I suppose, a thousand times when I 
have been discussing the matter. But the 
world has done so many "impossible" things 
that I do not despair even of this. We are 
not in the temper now to have wise people 
draw lines beyond which they say we cannot 
go. The great French philosopher Comte 
tried it. He said it was no use trying to study 
the nature of the fixed stars ; that was some- 
thing forever beyond the reach of the human 
intellect. But he had hardly been buried be- 
fore the spectroscope was discovered ; and we 
know all about them now. A man in England 
said that a steamship could not cross the 
Atlantic Ocean ; and his demonstration was 
hardly completed when a ship did come over, 
and brought his demonstration with it. 

So we are not in a temper to be very patient 
with the people who tell us it is impossible to 



Primitive Ideas 7 

do this or that or the other thing. We will 
decide that it is impossible when there is no 
avenue of investigation or study that is left 
to us. 

There are others who tell us that it is better 
that we should not know. I wonder how they 
found that out ? They say that moral action 
must have in it an element of faith, of uncer- 
tainty. If you are sure of the result of what 
you do, the moral quality is taken out of it. I 
could never quite see why. A thing is good, 
even if I know that it is good. It is not 
necessary that I should have a doubt about it, 
in order to create a moral quality. 

Then there are those who tell us that there 
would be a rapid increase of suicides if we were 
perfectly certain about the other life, — that 
men would not bear the burdens that crush 
them down if they knew that death was not 
the end. Rather do I think that the number 
of suicides would decrease if we knew, first, 
that life keeps on ; and, if we knew, secondly, 
that under the universal law of cause and effect 
we are creating the to-morrow of death by the 
way in which we live the to-day of life. Rather 
do I believe that men would learn patiently to 
bear almost anything if they knew that the 
outcome was to be something certain, and that 



8 Life Beyond Death 

it might possibly be high and fine if they chose 
to make it so. 

So I believe that this hope that there is 
something better awaiting us across the border, 
if it can be transformed from hope to an 
absolute certainty, would be a grand gain in 
the upward lift of the life of man. 

There is one other thing that people are 
saying to us constantly, — I have had it said to 
me innumerable times, — " If God had intended 
that we should know, He would have made it 
perfectly plain to us." Why does not that 
principle apply to every other item of know- 
ledge as well? If God had intended that 
Europe should know there was another con- 
tinent over here to the west, He would have 
made it perfectly plain, and not left the world 
to wonder and speculate and venture for several 
thousand years before they found it out. 

As a matter of fact, God has not directly 
told us anything. He has left us to study 
and investigate on our own account, and to 
develop and cultivate our own intellectual and 
moral and spiritual natures in this process of 
study and investigation. 

So much by way of prelude. Let us turn 
now to consider briefly — for it will require no 
very profound investigation — the ideas of 



Primitive Ideas 9 

death and after which were held by primitive 
men. 

You know the Catholic Church tells us that 
Catholic doctrine is held with absolute certainty 
because all men always and everywhere have 
believed it. In other words, that which has 
been always believed by all men everywhere is 
true. So it may be important for us, in view 
of this assertion, to find out what the ideas of 
primitive man were on so important a subject 
as this. 

But can we get at primitive man ? Those 
who know, or think they know, tell us that 
men have been on this planet for something 
like three or four hundred thousand years. 

How then can we get at the thoughts of 
primitive men ? We cannot, in one sense ; and 
yet, so far as all practical necessity is con- 
cerned, we can. We need to remember that 
there are men to-day on the islands of the 
sea and in distant parts of the world who are 
living in a stage of culture which represents 
man's life two hundred thousand years ago. 
And we are to remember that these first men 
progressed very slowly. And we are to re- 
member, further, that religion, as we are find- 
ing out by constant experience every day of 
our lives, is the last thing in the world that 



io Life Beyond Death 

anybody is ever willing to change. Men hold 
it as so sacred that they hesitate to touch or 
change a religious belief or ritual or habit. 
So that for all practical purposes we can get 
at the primitive ideas of man concerning 
death and another life. 

It seems to me one of the strangest, one of 
the most startling things in the world, that men 
should have ever dreamed of another life at all. 
We stand beside a casket containing the body 
of a friend. That mysterious something that 
we call life is gone. That which looked out of 
the eyes, that which shaped the viewless air 
into speech on the lips, that which was in the 
clasp of the hand, that which animated the 
feet on their errands of kindliness and mercy, 
— life, — is gone. And it certainly does seem 
as though this were the end. And so I say it 
seems to me one of the most startling, audac- 
ious imaginations that ever entered the mind 
of man. Whence did it come, — the dream 
that something lives after death ? Some very 
remarkable thing must have happened along 
the lines of evolution between the highest 
animal and the lowest man. Animals think, 
dream, reason. Animals are conscious ; but 
animals are not self-conscious. No dog ever 
says, I am a dog, and thinks out the difference 



Primitive Ideas n 

between himself and other kinds of animals. If 
we should once see a Newfoundland dog gazing 
at the body of a comrade, weeping tears of 
heartbreak and saying to himself, " If a dog 
die, shall he live again ? " we should think we 
were in the presence of some strange pheno- 
menon, something more than we associate with 
animal life. And yet the lowest man that has 
ever been found on the face of the earth has 
not only asked this question, but has always 
answered it in the affirmative. 

One of the most striking things is to note 
that primitive men never believe in natural 
death. When a man dies, they feel perfectly 
certain that somebody has killed him ; it is an 
enemy. If not an enemy in the body, then a 
malignant spirit or one of the gods. This is 
the point I wish you to note : that primitive 
man does not believe in natural death. He 
believes that it is always caused by somebody; 
that it cannot be natural, a part of any order 
of things. Indeed he has no idea of any order 
of things. 

Now it is very natural that a crude, ignorant 
being should give very unsatisfactory reasons 
for his belief. Primitive man, wherever he 
can be found, always believes in a spiritual and 
an ordinarily invisible existence ; but the rea- 



12 Life Beyond Death 

sons that he would give you for holding that 
belief might be very crude and ignorant. It 
is, on the face of it, very strange and startling 
that it should be believed at all. 

The origin of the belief is still a matter of 
dispute among scholars. A certain class of 
thinkers associate it with shadows and dreams 
and swoons ; and very likely they may be 
rieht. Primeval man has no idea of the laws 
of reflection of light ; and he sees himself 
sometimes accompanied by a shadowy, second- 
ary self that comes in a mysterious fashion 
and goes away, he does not know how. He 
bends over a pool or a running stream, and 
sees this shadowy, secondary self there again, 
the one he had seen in the sunlight. It comes 
and goes in a wonderful way, he knows not 
why. Then he lies down when he is tired, 
and goes to sleep ; and he is off on a journey. 
He visits friends, he fights with his enemies, 
he is engaged in the delights and excitements 
of the chase. By and by he comes to himself, 
he wakes up ; and why should not this dream 
experience seem to him as real as any other ? 
But his comrades tell him that his body has 
been here all the time, has not moved. Then 
he straightway reasons, it is this spiritual, 
shadowy, secondary self that has been off on 



Primitive Ideas 13 

these excursions, engaged in these different 
occupations. 

And then, in the case of swoons, perhaps 
an enemy strikes him with a club, and he loses 
consciousness. His friends would not be able 
to tell that from death except that in one case 
this secondary self returns, and in the other 
it does not. We have still kept, in our civil- 
ised and modern speech, the last pale remnant 
of that old idea. A friend faints ; and, as she 
is recovering consciousness, we say, " She is 
coming to." She is coming back to the body 
that she had temporarily left. That is what 
the phrase means. 

And who shall tell us whether these primi- 
tive men were right or wrong ? No philo- 
sopher, no scientist, on the face of the earth is 
as yet able to explain to us either sleep or 
dream. There are those who believe that in 
sleep the spirit does temporarily leave the body, 
as an engineer leaves his engine for a little 
time, while he oils it and coals it and gets it 
ready to run its course again. There are men, 
I say, in the modern world, who believe this ; 
and there is nobody wise enough to convince 
them that they are wrong. It is a matter con- 
cerning which we have no definite knowledge 
one way or the other. 



H Life Beyond Death 

But the point you need to note and bear in 
mind is that primitive man, by some process 
of reasoning, came to accept the belief that 
he did have a secondary self inside his body, 
which could exist apart from his body, and 
which could go and come as a man leaves his 
house and returns to it again, and which, when 
death came to the body, went to return no 
more ; but did not cease to exist. 

Now there are one or two points connecting 
this idea with modern religious beliefs and 
practices which I must notice briefly. 

The first altar was undoubtedly a grave ; for, 
believing that their dead friends continued to 
exist, they naturally reasoned that they con- 
tinued to hunger and thirst just as they did 
here. So they brought and poured out on 
the grave drink for them, and laid upon it 
food, believing that then they ate the spiritual 
essence, knowing of course that the substance 
which they could see and handle was not 
thus consumed. A precisely similar idea, how- 
ever, to this, enters into the philosophy of the 
Eucharist as it is held in the Catholic Church 
to-day. 

The chants that were gone through with, in 
celebration of the virtues and heroic qualities 
of the dead, have their modern representative 



Primitive Ideas 15 

undoubtedly in our hymns of praise. They 
prayed to the dead, because they believed that 
these invisible friends or enemies were all 
about them in the air, and could help them or 
hurt them at will. They lighted fires on graves 
to show the soul the pathway through the dark 
in its journey to its other home ; and in cer- 
tain churches of the modern world candles are 
lighted and placed at the head of the casket ; 
and the one is vitally, intimately, connected 
with the other. The candle is only the civilised 
and modern representative of the primitive 
man's fire, which was to light the way of the 
soul on its dark journey. 

That which at first was only food and drink 
for the dead developed later into sacrifice ; 
and this sacrifice at first was a communion 
meal, of which the god partook along with his 
worshippers. Then, later still, it became an 
offering of thanks or of propitiation. The 
Eucharist, which did not originate with Christ- 
ianity, is the last and present representative of 
this primeval custom. 

Where did they believe that these souls went 
after death ? At first they would naturally 
haunt the places to which they had been ac- 
customed while living, and so it was believed 
that they were all about them ; and, if they 



1 6 Life Beyond Death 

were enemies, they prayed to be delivered from 
their power, tried to propitiate their wrath. If 
they were friends, they rejoiced in their pre- 
sence, and expected from them guidance and 
help. But by and by a tribe would move from 
its old habitat. Perhaps it first lived at the 
mouth of a river, and afterwards it would 
wander up the course of this river a hundred 
or two hundred miles ; and then they would 
think of the soul of the dead as going back 
to the old home. That is one of the most 
tender and touching things connected with 
this old thought, and is to be found throughout 
the entire history of the race. The place 
where the souls go is thought of as home : 
heaven is home. 

So, among these primitive ancestors, after 
they had wandered up the river, when it came 
to the time of burial, they would put the body 
of their friend in a boat, and send it adrift on 
the tide, so that it might go back to the old 
home. And, when they had wandered inland, 
they would still bury the body in a boat, or 
something bearing the semblance of a boat ; so 
persistent are these religious ideas and practices 
when once they become a part of the thought 
and life of the world. 

But almost every conceivable place came to 



Primitive Ideas 17 

be looked upon after a while, among some of 
the primeval peoples, as the abode of the dead. 
You remember reading in "Hiawatha" how 
the hero sets sail out over a lake in the track of 
the setting sun, and goes down towards those 
islands of the blessed, which perhaps had been 
created out of the clouds made glorious in the 
last rays of evening. In northern lands the 
glories of the auroral lights have been con- 
nected with the homes of departed spirits. 
Among other people these spirits have trodden 
the path of the Milky Way to some far place 
in the sky. Among other people there has 
been an abode beneath the surface of the earth. 
A thousand shapes this imaginative, loving 
trust of the world has taken, providing places 
where every want would be satisfied, where the 
tears should be all wiped away, where was to 
be no more sorrow, no more care, no more 
trouble, where every instinctive wish and desire 
should find its legitimate satisfaction. 

It is important to note — and we shall find the 
same truth all the way along — that primitive 
men believed in the possibility of communica- 
tion between the two worlds. 

No matter what the form may have been 
that these dreams and hopes have assumed, 
the one thing that I wish to impress upon you, 



1 8 Life Beyond Death 

as of more importance than anything else, is the 
simple fact that the very earliest men of the 
world should have believed. I think there is no 
exception : no tribe so ignorant, so degraded, so 
low, so uncultured, has been found that it did 
not hold in some form the belief that there was 
that in man which death could not touch. 

Is this delusion, or is it a whisper of the 
Eternal Spirit suggesting comfort and hope 
to His mortal children ? Is it a will-o'-the- 
wisp that plays over marshes that cannot sus- 
tain the feet of those that pursue, leading only 
into darkness and distress ; or is it, far away 
down the pathway of history, beyond the mists 
that rise over the twilight of the early world, 
— is it the first glimpse and gleam of a dawn, 
the dawn of a day that is destined to grow 
brighter and brighter until all darkness has 
disappeared ? 



II 

ETHNIC BELIEFS 

NO one will expect me to undertake the 
impossible task of compressing, or trying 
to compress, within the limits of one chapter, 
any general treatment of so large a theme. 
My purpose is a much simpler one than this. 
It is not particularly the belief of Egypt or 
India or Scandinavia or Greece or Rome that 
I am interested in. It is the growth and 
changes in the belief of man ; and I wish to 
consider these merely as phases of this human 
belief. And so what I have in hand just now 
is to note in some general way how far along 
in its progress the world had come when 
it reached the culmination of these old-time 
civilisations. s^ 

We first treated the ideas of primitive man. 
This, as you see, is the next step ; and after 
this we shall leave what we are accustomed to 
call the pagan world, and take up the line of 
historic progress that goes under the name of 
Hebrew and Christian civilisation. 

19 



20 Life Beyond Death 

At present, then, we are to consider for a 
little how far the world had come at the height 
of the civilisations of these old-time peoples, 
in its development concerning the belief about 
death and the life that it supposed was to 
follow it. 

One thing is worthy of our notice. The 
peoples of these different countries did not 
look upon this belief as a childish relic of the 
olden time, as something which barbaric people 
held, but which was to be outgrown and left 
behind. We find that the belief among 
these great nations was practically universal. 
They all held that death was not the end, but 
only an incident in life, leading to something 
beyond. But, when we speak of the belief of 
Egypt or of India or of any one of these other 
great nations, we need to keep carefully in mind 
one fact. Any one of these peoples had had a 
progress of thousands of years ; and of course 
its beliefs in regard to these matters, as well 
as in any other direction, had naturally and 
necessarily undergone many modifications. 

To illustrate what I mean : Suppose I 
should make some general statement about 
English belief concerning death and a future 
life. One might remind me of the fact that 
there were native Britons on the island before 



Ethnic Beliefs 21 

any conquest of which we know ; then that 
the island was conquered by other peoples, 
bringing with them their peculiar ideas, which 
ultimately became amalgamated with the native 
thought of the old Britons. Then by and by 
Christianity came and conquered the original 
Paganism : it was Catholic Christianity. This 
was followed by the Protestant Revolution ; 
this by the rise of free thought, the scientific 
spirit, agnosticism, and all the speculations of 
modern times. So one might very well ask 
me, when I refer to English belief, what period 
of English belief I have in mind ; for there are 
many English beliefs. But I do not need to 
do more than take notice of this fact. Let 
not the reader think I have carelessly over- 
looked it. It will be enough for my purpose 
to refer to some general outlines of the faith of 
these great peoples at certain periods of their 
most advanced civilisation. 

I wish now to make some brief suggestions 
concerning the nature of the places where the 
souls of the dead were supposed to have gone. 
I want, in other words, to bring imaginatively 
to the eye, if I can, some suggestive and suffi- 
cient picture of this other life which these 
people believed in. I can only set forth a few 
illustrative hints. 



22 Life Beyond Death 

The Egyptian religion is based on and is 
always connected with astronomical studies ; 
and, when the Egyptians came to believe in 
these other worlds for the souls of the dead, 
they connected them popularly with the circuit 
of the sun. The good souls either accom- 
panied the sun in his progress or lived some- 
where along the course of the sun's daily 
advance, while the bad were connected with 
his transit through the world of darkness and 
shadows preparatory to his daily course again. 

The Scandinavians had for their heroes and 
great fighters the Hall of Valhalla, where the 
souls fought over again the battles in which 
they so delighted here. They drank the 
celestial mead, and celebrated their deeds of 
renown. But this was not the only heaven 
that the Norsemen knew. They believed in a 
Hall of Friends, where quiet and gentle souls 
found an abode of peace. There was a place 
where the noble women of the world received 
the reward for their lives of faithfulness and 
devotion. They also, of course, with all these 
nations at the highest period of their develop- 
ment, had their places of sorrow and suffering, 
and sometimes of torture for those who had 
offended the gods or who had wronged their 
fellow-mep 



Ethnic Beliefs 23 

The Indian peoples believed in heavens and 
hells, both located in some indefinite region of 
space, — heavens where the good rested during 
the periods that separated the times of their 
different births. There were also hells where 
the bad awaited the new and worse fate that 
was to come to them by being born into some 
hideous, diseased, or animal form. 

The Persians also had their heavens and 
their hells. The Greeks and the Romans, 
with whom, perhaps, we are more familiar than 
with either of these others, located the under- 
world always beneath the surface of the earth. 
It was a place to which descent might con- 
ceivably be made. Some living person, as in 
the case of JEneas and Ulysses, might go down 
and visit those who were the inhabitants of 
this lower world. It was then always an under- 
ground cavern with the classic people where 
the good and bad went ; for, except in the 
case of some highly favoured souls, semi-divine 
heroes who were transferred to Olympus and 
were companions of the gods, no one ever 
" went to heaven " in the sense in which we 
are at the present time accustomed to use 
that term. 

These realms, then, as I said, were either 
under the surface of the earth or off some- 



24 Life Beyond Death 

where in the interstellar spaces. But we must 
bear in mind, if we wish to have any adequate 
thought of these old-time ideas, that the uni- 
verse up to within four hundred years of the 
present time has been comparatively a very 
small affair. The entire universe as it was 
thought of by the Greeks and Romans, for 
example, was not so large, not nearly so large 
as we imagine the solar system to be. The 
stars were not so very far away. Heaven 
was just above the dome of blue. And you 
are aware of the traditions that made people 
think that it might be possible for some hero 
to scale heaven and threaten the stability of 
the throne of Jupiter himself. 

(These merely as hints of the comparative 
size of the universe in the old time and the 
present.) 

Now I wish to suggest further some pecul- 
iar facts in regard to the nature of the soul, — 
the inhabitants of these other worlds. There 
are persons at the present time who, under the 
name of theosophy, have resurrected, or sup- 
pose themselves to have resurrected, certain 
phases of Buddha's Oriental ideas, who talk to 
us about shells and astral bodies as separate 
possibly from the central soul of man. It is 
very curious to note that in Greek and Latin 



Ethnic Beliefs 25 

mythology, as well as among the Egyptians 
and some of the other ancient nations, ideas 
akin to these were held. 

For example, when Ulysses goes down to 
the underworld, among others that he meets 
there, is the shade of Hercules ; and this shade 
is able to talk with him. He has indeed a 
shadowy life, but substance enough to carry 
on a conversation with the living hero ; and 
yet, according to the teaching of the thought 
of the time, the real Hercules, a demigod, had 
been transferred to Olympus, and was there 
living in companionship with the gods. So 
that, in a certain sense, you see there were two 
of him. 

Among the Egyptians also we find there 
was an unreal sort of shadow that sometimes 
haunted the tomb, or in some indefinite way 
was connected with the mummy, while the real 
soul was in one of the heavens or hells, receiv- 
ing the rewards or undergoing the punish- 
ments of the life he had lived here below the 
stars. 

Souls, therefore, were somewhat bountifully 
supplied ; and one of them could be in one 
place, while another was somewhere else. It 
reminds us of the Scotch traditions concerning 
the wraith, or apparition, which may be seen 



26 Life Beyond Death 

wandering over the heather while the owner is 
alive, and presumably has his body and soul 
both with him wherever he may be. But this 
life which they lived was a very shadowy one. 
Of course, we cannot reconcile it with any 
reasonable philosophical speculation of the 
modern world. When yEneas talks with his 
father Anchises in this underworld, the old man 
can weep, can speak in a voice that can be 
heard. He remembers the past, ho forecasts 
the future ; and yet, when the son endeavours 
to embrace him, there is no substance there, 
and his arms pass through the form as if it 
were merely a shadow. 

These people in the underworld, again, are 
ordinarily supposed to be ignorant of what is 
taking place on the surface of the earth ; 
and yet they have not forgotten the past. 
They are intensely interested in it. They 
are glad to hear news of their children, their 
descendants. They are proud if they have 
attained prosperity. They are cast down with 
sadness if they do not live lives which they 
regard as worthy, or, indeed, if anything un- 
fortunate has befallen them. Ignorant then 
generally as to what has taken place on the 
surface of the earth, it is still true — and I wish 
this to be noted as a separate and distinct fact 



Ethnic Beliefs 27 

— that under special conditions it is believed 
that communication may be established be- 
tween the underworld and the world up here 
where the sun shines. The way is usually 
closed. It is difficult for a spirit to come up to 
the surface of the earth. It is difficult for a 
man to go down and mingle with the shades. 
But there are conditions in which it is possible. 
This is worthy of attention, because there 
never has been a time that we can trace from 
the beginning of human thought on this sub- 
ject, when a belief like this has not been held. 
I do not say now that it is important. I do 
not dwell upon it. I wish simply to call it to 
the reader's attention. 

We come now to trace three or four very 
important things in connection with the beliefs 
of these people concerning the future. And, 
in the first place, it is worthy of note that the 
thought of evolution as connected with death 
had not entered their minds. They did not 
regard death as a step in advance. They did 
not have any forward and upward looking idea 
or hope connected with it. It was a sad neces- 
sity to them. At first there was no ethical idea 
connected with it. They did not regard it as 
a punishment ; it was only a sad fact that men 
must die. They did not look forward to it 



28 Life Beyond Death 

with any anticipation of joy. They pitied 
those who were obliged to go down into this 
gloomy and half-unreal world of shades ; and 
they looked forward to the necessity of it in 
their own case, as most of us do to-day, as 
something to be postponed and avoided by 
every possible means in their power. 

I wish to touch on two or three illustrative 
phases of this belief. There are a good many 
persons in the modern world who are coming 
to accept the idea of reincarnation as though 
it were something desirable, as though it solved 
the problems and helped them settle some of 
the practical difficulties of life. Remember, 
then, that in India, both among the Brahmins 
and among the Buddhists, it was not a welcome 
thought. It was held, indeed, almost univers- 
ally. All men believed that they had existed 
before, and that they would exist — nobody 
knew how many times — again. Perhaps in the 
past they had been kings, or beggars ; they 
had been diseased and crippled outcasts ; they 
had been people of wealth and consideration ; 
they had occupied almost every conceivable 
position in society. Not only had they been 
men, perhaps they had been elephants, perhaps 
they had been apes, perhaps they had been 
flies or gnats or serpents ; for the kinship of 



Ethnic Beliefs 29 

the human and the sub-human was held in 
India to such an extent that this sort of trans- 
formation was not only believed to be possible, 
but to be actual, and constantly going on. If 
a man had lived a noble life, he might expect 
to be born in some higher station after a brief 
respite in some one of the heavens. If he had 
lived a bad life, he looked forward to being 
born in some poorer and meaner condition. 
And it was not possible for him to balance the 
good and the bad, to say, " There has been 
more good in my life than there has been bad," 
and so have something on his credit account. 
No matter how good he had been, if he had 
been bad at all that badness must be expiated 
to the letter in some rebirth that was to follow. 

Dreary, then, was the prospect that awaited 
them. They could look forward to no rest. 
There had been thousands, possibly millions, of 
births in the past ; and there awaited them 
thousands, perhaps millions, of births in the 
future. They did not know how many ; and, 
as they looked forward to it, it seemed an inter- 
minable and wearisome round. 

The Brahmins and the Buddhists, then, did 
not anticipate this fate with joy. They did 
not look forward to it even with resignation ; 
for the one sole object of the Brahmin religion 



So Life Beyond Death 

was to live so as to attain such wisdom as to 
enable the soul to escape this horrible necessity 
of being continually reborn. The one thing 
to look forward to was that he might, after no- 
body knew how long, attain absorption in 
Brahma, lose the conciousness of personal 
identity, forget to think, forget to hope, to de- 
sire, to fear, and so share in some impersonal 
way the felicity of the infinite and eternal 
spirit. 

So this fate was what the Brahmin was 
trying to escape ; and the Buddhist was en- 
gaged in the same effort. He had a different 
philosophy, looked upon the universe in a dif- 
ferent way ; but he believed also in this 
eternal, weary round of rebirths. And the 
one thing that Gautama was striving for was to 
show his followers the path — to what ? The 
path out of this fearful necessity into Nirvana. 
And what was Nirvana ? Scholars are still 
disputing over it ; but it was either the loss of 
self-consciousness, the attainment of eternal 
calm, or else it was something so near un- 
consciousness that the most careful students 
find themselves unable to draw any thinkable 
distinction. 

The Brahmins, then, and the Buddhists did 
not anticipate the next life, except as they 



Ethnic Beliefs 31 

looked afar off with an ever-sustained hope to 
the possibility of losing individual existence 
and sharing in the supposed impersonal felicity 
of the Eternal. 

The Greeks and the Romans again looked 
upon this other life, not as something to be 
desired, but to be dreaded. It was the loss of 
all they cared for. If you get the picture of 
it in your minds, you will see how undesirable 
it must have been. They went down into this 
underground, shadowy world. They no longer 
saw the sun, nor the stars at night. They no 
longer felt the breezes of heaven fanning their 
brows. They no longer felt the pulsing of the 
blood in their veins, the free beating of it in 
their hearts. There was no longer this real, 
flesh-and-blood existence. There was no longer 
glad consciousness of power on the part of the 
athlete, the ability to engage in the struggles 
of war or the peaceful strifes of the arena. 
There was no longer the reality of love and 
friendship such as they had enjoyed in the 
olden days. It was a shadowy, unreal sort of 
world where they lived over again in seeming, 
their memory of what they had cared for in 
the olden time. 

As an illustration of the way it was looked 
on, let us read over one brief passage from 



32 Life Beyond Death 

the Odyssey. Ulysses has been permitted to 
go down to this underworld ; and he meets 
there Achilles, the great hero of the ancient 
world, and in the midst of their conversation 
he thus addresses him : — 

" . . . . ' But as for thee, 
Achilles, no man lived before thy time, 
Nor will hereafter live, more fortunate 
Than thou, — for while alive we honoured thee 
As if thou wert a god, and now again 
In these abodes thou rulest o'er the dead. 
Therefore, Achilles, shouldst thou not be sad.' 

I spake. Achilles, quickly answered me : 
1 Noble Ulysses, speak not thus of death 
As if thou wouldst console me. I would be 
A labourer on earth, and serve for hire 
Some man of mean estate, who makes scant cheer, 
Rather than reign o'er all who have gone down 
To death.' " 

Let us now take one more step, and see 
that at first there was no ethical idea associated 
with this fact of death. By that I mean 
something twofold. First, they did not ex- 
plain the fact of death ethically. It had no 
moral significance. And, in the next place, 
they had no developed doctrines of rewards or 
punishments. Let us consider both of these 
as briefly as we may and at the same time 
make them clear. 



Ethnic Beliefs 33 

Men at first took death as a sad fact which 
they could not avoid ; but they did not at- 
tempt to explain it in any philosophical way. 
They did not believe in natural death. They 
did not see at first why it should be inevitable ; 
and they always held to the belief that, when a 
man died, it was always because somebody had 
killed him. But by and by, when they saw 
that death was universal, they began to see 
that some general fate hung over them. But 
they did not regard it as a punishment for 
anything which they had done. They sim- 
ply accepted it because they must, without 
explanation. 

Again, it is found that in the early thinking 
of all these peoples there was in the next 
world no division between the good and the 
bad. All went to one place. Death was a 
sufficient punishment for evil ; and it was the 
same inexplicable thing that also came upon 
the good. There was no heaven and no hell 
in the early thinking of these peoples. But by 
and by, as the moral sense grew, you will see 
that they inevitably sought some moral ex- 
planation of these strange facts. So at last it 
came about that death was looked upon as a 
punishment for human sin. 

Among the Persians, for example, men were 



34 Life Beyond Death 

created with the intention that they should 
live here on earth for some indefinite period, 
and then be transferred, without dying, to the 
abodes of the gods. 

There was in the Persian theology one great 
original Power, and under him two gods in 
age-long antagonism, — the god of darkness 
and evil, and the god of good and light, — of 
apparently equal power. They were matched 
in an age-long contest ; and it was because 
men took sides with Ahriman, the god of 
darkness and evil, that they were made, as a 
punishment, subject to death, which had not 
been a part of the original creative plan. But 
in this Persian theology, it is well for us to re- 
member, there were none of the horrors which 
humanity has imagined in some of these later 
centuries. There were age-long hells, but all 
of them were some time to. come to an end. 
Even Ahriman himself, the bad god, and the 
prototype of the Christian devil, was to be 
converted and become subject to the deity of 
light and of good. So that ultimately peace 
and purity and blessedness were to reign. 

In Egyptian theology we find some of the 
noblest teaching anywhere to be discovered in 
the world. In the Book of the Dead, which 
recounts the trial of the soul and its apportion- 



Ethnic Beliefs 35 

ment either to bliss or to misery, there are 
some of the highest and finest ethical teachings 
to be found in any religious composition on 
earth. The souls are judged with absolute 
impartiality as to what they are and what they 
have done, and they go their way into light or 
darkness as the just assignment of an impartial 
judge. But again, in Egypt, the hells are not 
to last forever. Punishment was not eternal. 

Among the Greeks and Romans death has 
not been generally explained as the result of 
any sin on the part of man. They all at first 
went down into the underworld. But, when 
we come to the highest and finest development 
of their conceptions of the other life, we find 
that this underworld is divided into two. There 
is Elysium, where the good are as happy as 
any of the dead can be ; and there is Tartarus, 
the place where the very wicked are tortured 
and punished. But it is worth our careful 
consideration that generally, — and this, you 
will see, chimes in remarkably with ordinary 
Christian dogma, — the bad were punished, not 
so much because they were bad to their fellow- 
men, but for some outrage to the gods, some 
impiety towards them. They had offended 
some deity or had profaned some altar, some 
temple, some sacrifice. 



36 Life Beyond Death 

You will see, then, that the growth of ethical 
ideas concerning the next life keeps pace, and 
very naturally, with the growth of ethical ideas 
generally here among men. 

There is one other thought now to which I 
must ask your consideration ; and that is that 
there came a time, and that, the time of the 
highest civilisation of these ancient peoples, 
when scepticism began to come in and invade 
these hitherto universally accepted beliefs. 
And there is one principle so important that I 
must ask you to give it your special attention, 
— a principle of age-long application, the prin- 
ciple which, in changed conditions and in re- 
gard to changed ideas, we are facing to-day. 

There is always, at any period of human 
advance, a great belief, a belief like this that the 
soul continues after death alive. Then what ? 
Then there is an intellectual way of stating 
that belief. There is the formal framework of 
ideas in which the belief is set. There is the 
imaginative picture of that other world and 
of the soul that inhabits it, of its conditions 
there. 

Now, I wish you carefully to separate these 
two ideas. It is possible for people to hold a 
belief which is vital and true ; and at the same 
time it is possible for them to give that belief 



Ethnic Beliefs 37 

an intellectual statement which is absurd ; so 
that, as people become wiser and think more 
carefully about it, they find themselves under 
the necessity of rejecting it. And then what 
happens ? Why, what is happening right here 
to-day. The priests, the teachers, the theo- 
logians, have so associated the real belief and 
its intellectual statement as to make them 
necessary to each other, almost to seem parts 
of each other, practically identical. So when a 
person finds himself unable any longer to hold 
the intellectual statement of the belief, he feels 
that he is losing the belief itself, because he 
has been taught for ages that the two are in- 
separably bound together. 

Now, the statement which these barbaric 
peoples had framed of the nature of the soul, 
the place of its abode, its rewards and pun- 
ishments was cruel, was ignorant, because it 
grew up in cruel and ignorant times. But it 
became consecrated as a part of religion, and 
the priests did not dare to change it; and it 
came to be associated in the minds of those 
who held it with the belief itself. But, as 
people grew more and more educated, were 
able to think more clearly and logically, the 
Olympus, crowned with the gods, became an 
absurd detail that no sensible man could be- 



38 Life Beyond Death 

lieve. The kind of souls that they had talked 
about they could no longer accept ; and the 
heavens and the hells came to be questionable, 
so that the belief in immortality itself began to 
be questioned, — not by bad people, not by 
ignorant people, — ignorant and bad people are 
generally soundly " orthodox" in all ages of the 
world ; they began to be questioned by the 
thoughtful and best educated, the best people, 
because, as I said, intelligence could no longer 
believe these traditional statements about the 
gods and the souls and the heavens and the 
hells. 

And so what do we find ? We find, for 
example, in the noblest period of Roman 
history, Julius Caesar, high priest, Pontifex 
Maxzmus, the official head of the Roman re- 
ligion, believing neither in the gods nor in any 
future life. We find the augurs, men engaged 
in carrying out the details of the national 
religion, as it is said, not looking in each 
other's faces while they were about it, lest 
they should laugh, because it had come to 
seem to them unreal and absurd. We find a 
writer like Lucian — almost, perhaps, an ancient 
duplicate of Colonel Ingersoll to-day. He 
was witty, gifted with a power of satire and 
ridicule that has rarely been matched, and, as 



Ethnic Beliefs 39 

we would say, poking infinite fun at the whole 
universe — ridiculing the gods, ridiculing the 
other life, all the popular beliefs of his time, 
and making them so ridiculous that any person 
who carefully thought would find it impossible 
to hold them in those old ways any longer. 

So this inevitable period of scepticism came. 
And it will come in every age inevitably, so 
long as the priests and the leaders in the re- 
ligious life insist upon creating fictitious infal- 
libilities. Fit out any set of ideas with the 
attribute of infallibility, and, when they are out- 
grown, you will have an inevitable period of 
scepticism. The only way to escape it is to 
keep thought free, so that, while people cherish 
the inner and central faith of their religion, 
the form may take infinite liberty in changing 
and adapting itself to the intellectual condi- 
tions of the time. 

Socrates, Plato, Plutarch, Cicero, Seneca, 
and their fellows speculated, talked, and wrote 
about these great questions very much as 
thoughtful men have been doing ever since 
their time. They believed or they doubted 
and tried to believe. They hoped and they 
sought and attempted to give consolation in 
face of the inevitable fate. To-day we find 
their arguments strong or weak, according as 



4-o Life Beyond Death 

the trend of our own thinking leads. They 
witness, at any rate, to the inextinguishable 
thirst of the human soul for an answer to its 
eternal question. 

There swept, then, over the ancient world a 
great wave of doubt as to the reality of any 
future life ; but I want you to note carefully 
that this doubt did not necessarily touch the 
innermost heart of the belief, only its outward 
form, its statement. And I wish you to note, 
further, that these intellectual discussions did 
not disturb or upset the great deep-down faiths 
of the common people. These waited for 
some period when there should be a larger 
and clearer conception that should clothe these 
old trusts, and make them once more accept- 
able to the philosophers, the scientists, and the 
scholars of the time. 




Ill 

THE OLD TESTAMENT AND 
IMMORTALITY 

I PROPOSE in this chapter to outline as 
* clearly and simply as I can the growth and 
changes of belief among the Hebrew people. 
You will understand that this belief changes, 
that there are all phases of it from the begin- 
ning to the end, and that it is impossible to 
sum it up in any one general phrase. I shall 
then outline, in simple, plain fashion, the 
growth and changes of this faith. A topic 
like this does not admit of enthusiastic treat- 
ment. I cannot, while dealing legitimately 
and fairly, play upon your passions and your 
feelings, rouse you to high pitches of excite- 
ment. I must rather keep along the common- 
place level of simple narrative and description. 
But this characteristic of my theme will not 
hold true of a good many others that are to 
follow. 

There is one very striking thing at the out- 
41 



42 Life Beyond Death 

set. Tradition tells us that Moses, having 
been discovered hidden away in the bulrushes 
on the banks of the Nile, was adopted by the 
daughter of Pharaoh, and treated and trained 
as her son. And we are told that he was 
learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. 
If this tradition be reliable, of course he must 
have had an intimate and comprehensive ac- 
quaintance with the ordinary Egyptian beliefs 
about this world, about the gods, about the 
other life. And yet Moses is the founder, not 
only of the religion, but of the Jewish state. 
He is the one who, as tradition tells us, gave 
shape at the outset to the young Hebrew 
civilisation. 

Now, if there is any one thing that is appar- 
ent on the face of Egyptian belief, it is that 
they held the strongest kind of imaginative 
belief in another life. It is said that the young 
Egyptian, almost before he made preparations 
for keeping house in this world, began to make 
preparations for his tomb, looking forward to 
his relation to that life which was to follow 
this. Perhaps there is no other nation in an- 
tiquity in which this belief in another life was 
more clearly and universally accepted and de- 
veloped. And yet here we face the striking 
fact that I referred to a moment ago. When 



Old Testament Teaching 43 

Moses comes to give shape to the Hebrew 
state and religion, he takes absolutely no ac- 
count whatever of any belief in any other life 
than this. There is nowhere in that part of 
the Bible which is especially associated with 
Moses any clear teaching of any future life at 
all. There is nowhere any doctrine as to re- 
wards in another life for good deeds in this, or 
of punishment in any other life for bad deeds 
in this. The other life, in other words, plays 
no part in the Mosaic tradition. 

How shall we account for this ? There 
have been a great many explanations offered. 
Some have suggested that Moses came to 
think that the Egyptians laid too much em- 
phasis on the other life, to the neglect of this 
one, and that, therefore, he left it practically 
out of account in his legislation. Others have 
said that, by a natural feeling of revulsion, the 
escaped slaves would be sure to hate whatever 
was associated with their former oppressors 
and masters. And yet there are certain very 
striking characteristics of the Hebrew religion 
which have their counterparts and parallels in 
the Egyptian. I am not ready to say that 
Moses borrowed them from the Egyptians, but 
it looks on the surface very much like it. The 
one central feature, almost, of the Jewish re- 



44 Life Beyond Death 

ligion is the ark. The ark was one of the 
principal features of the Egyptian religion. 
Among the early Hebrews Yahweh, the na- 
tional god, was worshipped in the figure of a 
bull. This was one of the commonest of the 
Egyptian idols ; and the significance attached 
to it by the two peoples was substantially the 
same. So it does not seem to me that we can 
find right here the explanation for the strange 
fact that Moses should have left the other life 
so entirely out of account. Perhaps it is not 
worth our while to spend much time in trying 
to explain it. The fact is there, and it is 
worthy of our notice ; and perhaps that is 
enough for our purpose. 

Now, I wish in a general way to emphasise 
what I have said in regard to the so-called 
Mosaic legislation, and state a few common 
facts concerning the whole Old Testament. 
The word " heaven " and the word " hell" ap- 
pear very frequently, indeed, in the Old Testa- 
ment ; and, when I was reading these chapters, 
as a boy, I naively took it for granted that the 
writers were talking about the same kind of 
heaven and hell that I had been trained to 
believe in. But I wish you to note with a 
great deal of care that there is not one single 
place throughout the whole Old Testament 



Old Testament Teaching 45 

where the word " heaven " means what we are 
accustomed to associate with that name as 
popularly used to-day. There is not one 
place in the whole Old Testament where the 
word " hell " means what we mean by it to-day. 
So there is no doctrine of heaven and hell, in 
the modern theological sense, in the whole 
Old Testament. 

There is not a case where anybody ever 
goes to hell in the Old Testament as the re- 
sult of his bad deeds. There are only two 
cases in the whole Old Testament where any- 
body ever goes to heaven ; and those two find 
their basis chiefly in tradition rather than any- 
thing else. Those two cases you will readily 
remember: they are Enoch and Elijah. It is 
said of Enoch, " And Enoch walked with 
God ; and he was not, for God took him." 
This is all that the narrative says. But the 
belief grew up in after times that what this 
really meant was that God had taken Enoch 
directly to heaven without his passing through 
the process of dying. 

The other case is the familiar story of Eli- 
jah. In his old age he is walking with his 
companion prophet, Elisha ; and suddenly 
there appear horses of fire and chariots of fire, 
and, before the astonished eyes of his compa- 



46 Life Beyond Death 

triot, Elijah is seized away from his presence 
and caught up by a whirlwind into heaven. 
This is the record of the other supposed 
translation. 

You will note that neither is especially clear 
on the subject ; but they are distinguished as 
being the only two cases in the Old Testament 
where anybody is supposed to have gone to 
heaven. 

Now, in order that I may make perfectly 
clear the teaching of the Old Testament con- 
cerning death and another life, I wish to quote 
and comment on a few of the principal passa- 
ges in the Old Testament that are supposed 
to have some bearing on some phase of this 
problem. And, in the first place, take the 
passage that tells us about the creation of 
Adam, — " And the Lord God formed man of 
the dust of the ground, and breathed into his 
nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a 
living soul." 

A great many persons are accustomed to 
suppose that this teaches by implication the 
fact of the immortal life, because, if man be- 
came the possessor of a living soul, that, they 
think, would go on. But the moment we look 
beneath the surface, and see that the word 
translated "soul" is precisely the same word 



Old Testament Teaching 47 

which in other parts of the Old Testament is 
used to denote the life principle of animals, 
we see that it either proves too little or too 
much. Undoubtedly, the writer of that pas- 
sage did not have this thought in his mind one 
way or the other. 

I have said there was no clear doctrine of 
another life in the Old Testament ; and yet we 
find cropping up in the lives of the common 
people a belief which at least takes us a little 
way across the border, and suggests that 
thoughts in this direction were beginning to 
come into the popular mind. Take the com- 
mand in Exodus, — " Thou shalt not suffer a 
witch to live." In Deuteronomy there is le- 
gislation concerning divination and witchcraft. 
Then there is that famous story — the best ex- 
ample of all — of the witch of Endor, and how, 
to please Saul, she calls up the spirit of the 
old prophet Samuel. 

But, if we study the characteristics of the 
real belief of the people at that time, we shall 
find, — what I shall emphasise in a moment, — 
that this spirit of Samuel was supposed to 
have been in a sort of comatose, unconscious 
condition, either connected with the place 
where he was buried or in that crude and in- 
definite underworld which was the first stage 



48 Life Beyond Death 

in the growth of sheol. He is disturbed and 
roused by the witch's magic out of this sleep, 
this condition of unconsciousness, utters his 
message, and goes back into that condition 
again. 

Undoubtedly, here is the beginning of the 
belief in an underworld ; but it is anything but 
clear, and it was frowned upon by the author- 
ities, the representatives of the priesthood. 
It was made a crime to have thus any com- 
munion with the dead. 

It is worth our taking careful note of, right 
here, that among the Hebrew people, as you 
will find at all stages of their career, there was 
a belief in the possibility of communication 
between the two worlds. We find that a simi- 
lar thing has been true in every nation, in 
every religion that we are able to investigate. 

I am taking these passages, not certainly in 
chronological order, but in the order of the 
books as they stand in our Bible now. I wish 
you to note the picture of this other life as it 
appears in Job — if you can call it life. He says, 
" Before I go whence I shall not return, even 
to the land of darkness and the shadow of 
death : a land of darkness, as darkness itself ; 
and of the shadow of death, without any 
order, and where the light is as darkness." 



J 



Old Testament Teaching 49 

This is his picture, — the picture of the con- 
dition of the shades as it had developed itself 
up to the time of Job. The soul did not go 
quite into extinction ; but it went down into 
this shadowy, underground world, where there 
was no real life, no consciousness, where it was 
close on the borders of annihilation. 

But there is another passage in Job which 
has been made a great deal of, which seems to 
take a long step forward. You remember it, 
— " For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and 
that He shall stand at the latter day upon the 
earth." It is unfortunate that this word " Re- 
deemer " should be here in this passage ; and 
it is not here in the Revised Version. Every 
scholar knows that it has no sort of connection 
with the thought of a Redeemer, as we are 
accustomed to use that word. Job has been 
accused, and, he feels, unjustly accused ; and he 
simply stoutly asserts his belief that his vindi- 
cator liveth and that this vindicator will some 
time appear for his deliverance and justify his 
contention that he is innocent. So you see 
this has no real bearing on this subject at all. 

Here is a little passage from the Psalms that 
does seem to have a very strong implica- 
tion in that connection. Unfortunately, we 
are not able, with any definiteness, to assign 



1 



50 Life Beyond Death 

the time when these particular passages were 
written. If we could, we might get a very 
much clearer idea of the order of growth of 
belief among the Hebrew people. The writer 
of this Psalm — we have no idea who he was 
— says, " Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell 
[sheol], neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one 
to see corruption." Here is the beginning of 
that dawn of hope of deliverance from this 
underworld to which I shall call your attention 
in a moment. 

The ordinary tone of the Psalmists concern- 
ing death is not at all hopeful. Take this one. 
He is asking God to keep him alive, and let 
him offer Him acceptable worship while he is 
here. He says : 

" What profit is there in my blood when I go down to 
the pit ? Shall the dust praise thee ? Shall it declare 
thy truth ? Wilt thou show wonders to the dead ? Shall 
the dead arise and praise thee ? Shall thy loving-kind- 
ness be declared in the grave or thy faithfulness in 
destruction ? Shall thy wonders be known in the dark, 
or thy truth in the land of forgetfulness ? " 

And then the writer of Ecclesiastes : 

" For there is no remembrance of the wise more than 
the fool forever, — seeing that which now is, in the days 
to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise 
man ? As the fool ? " " For the living know that they 



Old Testament Teaching 51 

shall die ; but the dead know not anything, neither 
have they any more reward, for the memory of them is 
forgotten." 

And then that famous passage towards the 
end of the book: "Whatsoever thy hand 
findeth to do, do it with thy might ; for there 
is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor 
wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest." 

In another place is a touch of the Oriental 
doctrine of reabsorption into Deity. It is not 
to be personal immortality at all. "Then 
shall the dust return to the earth as it was, 
and the spirit shall return unto God who gave 
it." The person is made up of two elements, 
the finer spiritual side and the earthly; and 
they go back, and are reabsorbed into that 
from which they came. 

Now, there is one very striking picture of 
the condition of belief in this underworld to 
be found in Isaiah. The prophet is address- 
ing the King of Babylon, and foretelling what 
is coming to him. He says : 

" Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at 
thy coming ; it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the 
chief ones of the earth ; it hath raised up from their 
thrones all the kings of the nations. And they shall speak, 
and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we ? art 
thou become like unto us ? Thy pomp is brought down to 



52 Life Beyond Death 

the grave, and the noise of thy viols ; the worm is spread 
under thee, and the worms cover thee." 

This in Isaiah is a picture of what was ex- 
pected in the future. 

There is a very famous passage in Daniel. 
Daniel, you must remember, however, was writ- 
ten within two hundred years of the time of 
Christ ; and beyond question it represents the 
dawning of a great and hopeful belief, to 
which I shall call your attention in a moment. 
" Many of them that sleep in the dust of the 
earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, 
and some to shame and everlasting contempt." 

These extracts give you a fair and fairly 
adequate conception of the Old Testament 
teaching concerning belief in another life, if 
you call it life. Now I wish to go back, and 
indicate to you in broad outline some of the 
steps of the growth of this belief. 

The Hebrew people in their religious thought 
and practice ranged all the way from the low- 
est barbarism up to the highest period of their 
civilisation in the time of Jesus. At the out- 
set they were nature-worshippers. They were 
sex-worshippers, with rites which to-day would 
seem to us obscene. They were sacrificers of 
human beings, even their own children ; and, 
at the time when we find them in this con- 



Old Testament Teaching 53 

dition, there is no belief in any desirable 
future life at all. At first there begins, just 
as we find it among all barbaric peoples, the 
notion that a shade may haunt the place of 
burial ; and this grave at lasts develops into 
the thought of an underground abode, and 
this expands and grows larger as the thought 
of the people changes and expands. 

At first, then, we must remember, that the 
Hebrew universe was a very small affair. 
Think, for example, — heaven, as their early 
writers pictured it, this blue dome above us, 
the " firmament," as it was called, was like a 
brass dome or cover, beaten out and shut 
down around the edge of the earth, — I do not 
know how to explain it better than to say like 
the cover of a dinner platter. It was regarded 
as solid. There were little windows in it to 
let the rain through. Up above this were 
stored the waters above the firmament, in con- 
trast with the seas and lakes and rivers, the 
waters beneath the firmament. There was no 
underground world there. But above this 
firmament was heaven, where God and His 
angels abode ; but no people went there, no 
human beings dreamed of such a thing as^ 
looking forward to that kind of destiny. 

Throughout the Old Testament, if you will 



54 Life Beyond Death 

note it carefully as you read, there is no ethical 
significance attached to the life after death. 
There is no future punishment for sin at first, 
indeed almost nowhere in the Old Testament. 
It is the inevitable fate of men ; but the good 
and the bad all alike go down into this under- 
world, one destiny awaits them all, and one 
hopelessness hangs with its gloom over them 
all. The only punishment that is ever threat- 
ened in the greater part of the Old Testament 
for flagrant wrong-doing is that men shall die. 
The one great reward held out for goodness 
is health, long life, many children, wealth, 
consideration among one's people, friends, and 
fame, — all rewards attaching to this life. 

But of necessity an ethical sense must spring 
up among the Jews, because it springs up 
among all peoples after they reach a certain 
stage of development. The Book of Job con- 
cerns itself with the problem that sprang out 
of this old and popular idea. It was found 
that good people did not necessarily have better 
health than bad people. It was found that 
good people did not live seventy or eighty 
years, any more surely than bad people. It 
was found that the good were not always rich, 
not always prosperous, that they were not al- 
ways blessed with children, that they were not 



Old Testament Teaching 55 

always famous among their people ; and it was 
found that bad people as frequently carried off 
the rewards of this life as did the virtuous. 
Thus they found that this theory would not 
work. Then there sprang up in their belief, 
as there has all over the world out of a similar 
experience, the belief in some future life of 
rewards and punishments, where the inequali- 
ties of the present should be readjusted. This 
seemed to them a fundamental demand of just- 
ice. If God were righteous, there must be a 
reward for goodness. If God were righteous, 
there must be punishment sometime and some- 
where for wrong ; and, if it did not appear in 
this world, then it must appear in some other 
world. 

So, out of reasoning like this, and the nat- 
ural development of this first thin shade and 
the hollow connected with the grave, there 
grew at last the great underworld, which they 
called "sheol," mistranslated hell: or, rather, 
let me say, it is translated well ; for hell comes 
from the same root as " hole," and originally 
meant only an underground cavern. In pro- 
gress of time and change of thought it was 
narrowed at last and limited to a place of pun- 
ishment, but that was not its original meaning. 
So in the prayer-book, where it says that Christ 



56 Life Beyond Death 

descended into hell, it does not necessarily 
mean that he went to a place of torment. 

There grew up, then, in the course of Jew- 
ish progress of thought a belief in the under- 
world ; but the life down there was no more 
desirable than we find it to have been among 
the Greeks and the Romans. It was giving 
up the bright sunlight and the beauty and 
glory of this world under the sun and stars, 
and going down into a world of shadows. It 
was a fate from which to escape, if possible ; 
and so, naturally, there grew in the minds of 
the people a belief that the good, at any rate, 
who were imprisoned in sheol, should escape. 

This led to the doctrine of the resurrection. 
I shall have occasion to point out to you a 
very important distinction. The doctrine of 
the resurrection does not necessarilylnean the 
resurrection of the body : it means a re-surrec- 
tion, — that is, a coming up again after having 
gone down somewhere. That is what the word 
means. So the Jews came to believe that 
those who were imprisoned in sheol could 
come up again, be resurrected. Whether they 
were joined to their old bodies or not was en- 
tirely another question, to be settled by other 
considerations. 

So the doctrine came to be taught, — which 



Old Testament Teaching 57 

was that these people imprisoned in the un- 
derworld should by and by be set free, and 
come up into the light again. And when was 
this to be ? You see we are a long distance 
from any heaven yet. This was to be at the 
time of the coming of the Messiah. The Mes- 
siah was to appear, represent God's justice 
towards His own people and His judgment on 
their enemies, and sit enthroned on Mount 
Moriah ; the trumpet was to be blown and 
the dead were to come up from sheol, from 
this underworld ; those who had been good, 
and faithful in the past, who had believed Him 
and served God according to the light they 
possessed, and looked forward with hope to 
deliverance in the future, — these were to rise 
first ; and they were to reign with the Messiah 
on the earth for a thousand years. 

This was the magnificent belief that at last 
sprang up from the instincts and longings of 
the Hebrew heart. Some of the people be- 
lieved that they were to be joined to their 
bodies, and some did not ; some believed that 
the good and bad both were to be raised out 
of sheol ; some believed that only the good 
were to be raised. You see there were all 
varieties of speculation, just as there are to- 
day, and just as there will be so long as human 



58 Life Beyond Death 

nature is what we know it to be now. Some 
believed that the bad, when they were raised, 
were to be cast into severe and age-long pun- 
ishment. Others believed that they were to 
be destroyed, — in what is called to-day " Con- 
ditional Immortality." 

Now, what kind of a world was this under- 
world ? I have said that nobody went to 
heaven ; and yet the belief grew up that the 
good were rewarded in this underworld and the 
bad were punished. What accommodation, 
then P was made for the inhabitants of sheol ? 
There was a dividing line, — that line which the 
Hebrew writers tell us was not thicker than a 
thread ; but it separated as by a great gulf Ge- 
henna and Paradise. All the dead went down 
into sheol, or hades ; the good went to Para- 
dise, and the bad went to Gehenna. But they 
were so near together that they could see from 
one place across to the other, and even con- 
verse with each other, as appears in some of 
the parables of Jesus. 

You will notice that I have gone a good 
way beyond the letter of the Old Testament. 
I have included in my discussion the growth 
of this belief in the other life up to the time 
of Jesus, across the great gulf of two or three 
hundred years represented by the blank leaves 



Old Testament Teaching 59 

between the Testaments. Though most peo- 
ple do not take the trouble to familiarise them- 
selves with what was going on during that 
time, those who have studied it know that it 
was one of the most intensely active and 
creative epochs in the history of the Jewish 
people. 

There grew up the belief that God had in- 
tended that men should be immortal here on 
earth ; that nobody should ever die ; that it was 
only sin that led to death ; that, if they had 
been obedient, they would have lived here 
until they were translated, without any death. 
A large part of the belief which I have out- 
lined, you note, covers this period of the blank 
between the Testaments ; so this development 
of the doctrine of the underworld, of Para- 
dise and Gehenna, both in Sheol, or Hades, 
did not appear in the letter of the Old 
Testament at all, but was one of the later 
growths of the Hebrew faith. 

At the time when Jesus was born we find 
three phases of belief which are worthy of our 
attention. 

First there were the Sadducees. I think the 
popular idea is that the Sadducees were a sort 
of modern sceptics of their time. So far from 
that 's being the truth, the Sadducees were the 



60 Life Beyond Death 

old, staid, respectable, "mossback" conserva- 
tives : they were the ones who claimed to stand 
by the letter of the Mosaic law ; and, therefore, 
they believed neither in angel nor spirit, and 
had no belief in any future life at all. They 
were the old conservatives. They represented 
the old-time Mosaic tradition. 

Then there were the Essenes. They were 
a sort of philosophical Platonists. They be- 
lieved in a future life, but not in the resurrec- 
tion of the body. They believed that the 
spirit was imprisoned here for a time in the 
body ; but, by and by, through death, it es- 
caped, and entered into the place prepared 
for it. 

But the great popular party among the 
Jews — those that represented their grandest 
traditions, patriotic and religious as well — 
were the Pharisees. And the Pharisees held 
that the traditions of the elders were of equal 
authority with the old-time Mosaic teaching ; 
and they had borrowed from the Babylonians 
or Persians the whole angelic hierarchy and of 
evil spirits as well, so that popularly they held 
not only a belief in immortality, but in innu- 
merable evil spirits and innumerable good 
spirits. A man was surrounded by thousands 
of them, one class attempting to lead him to 



Old Testament Teaching 61 

good and the other influencing him towards 
evil, so that he lived and walked every day in 
the midst of innumerable invisible inhabitants 
of the other world. This was the general 
Pharisaic belief at that time. So common did 
they believe these spirits to be that it is said 
that a man, if he threw a stone over his 
shoulder, or threw away from himself a broken 
piece of pottery, asked pardon of any spirit 
that he might possibly have hit in so doing. 
This was the kind of world that was believed 
in by the Pharisees at the time Jesus was born. 
We see, then, as the summed up result of 
this brief outline that, although there was no 
teaching apparent and emphasised on the sur- 
face of the Old Testament, there really was a 
common belief underneath the surface, grow- 
ing up in the hearts and imaginations of the 
common people ; and we see also what we 
commonly misunderstand, that these other 
worlds took the shape which they had to take. 
Sometimes, as we look back and are studying 
the conditions of thought in the past, we are 
moved, perhaps, with feelings of scorn or con- 
tempt, and wonder how anybody could have 
held such ideas. But the evolutionist who 
studies carefully the growth of human thought, 
who traces it step by step, knows that at every 



62 Life Beyond Death 

stage of human progress men have been as ra- 
tional as their brain development at the time 
permitted them to be. They have reasoned 
as well as we reason to-day, in accordance with 
the facts with which they were familiar, or 
what they supposed to be facts. 

Thus the intellectual picture of this other 
life, its location, its inhabitants, its activities, 
was the background, or framework, that the in- 
tellectual development of the time was capable 
of outlining. 

The moral idea, the thought of rewards and 
punishments, was the best that the moral de- 
velopment of the time was capable of framing ; 
and the spiritual ideas and spiritual hopes were 
foregleams and foreshadows of the higher and 
finer and nobler truths of which we are gaining 
glimpses to-day. 

So the Hebrews, in common with all the other 
great peoples of the past, were passing through 
their normal and necessary stage of evolution 
in regard to this matter, their thought leading 
on to that which doth not yet appear. 



IV 



PAUL'S DOCTRINE OF DEATH AND THE 
OTHER LIFE 

PAUL says in the first chapter of the Epis- 
tle to the Philippians, the twenty-third 
and twenty-fourth verses, " For I am in a strait 
betwixt two, having a desire to depart and to 
be with Christ ; which is far better. Never- 
theless to abide in the flesh is more needful 
for you." 

This, you note, is Paul's general view of 
life and death. Unselfishly, he is willing to 
abide with the disciples, with those who are 
anxious to learn the new truth and to carry 
on his work. He recognises that it is better 
that he should do it ; but note the significance 
of his feeling, and the strangeness of that sig- 
nificance, — if he could have his own way, he 
would choose to die. Have there been many 
companions of Paul in that choice, in the his- 
tory of the world ? He really believed that to 
depart, and be with Christ, was a good deal 
better than anything he could find here. 

63 



64 Life Beyond Death 

I have chosen to take up the belief and 
teaching of Paul before that of Jesus, for the 
reason that the record of his belief precedes 
the record of the belief of Jesus. That is, in 
the chronological order in which the books 
were written, the Epistles of Paul come earlier 
than the Gospels. I am following the chro- 
nological order of the record, then, rather 
than the chronological order of the teaching 
itself ; and I do it for the reason that it is pos- 
sible that the beliefs put upon the lips of the 
Master may have been coloured by the opin- 
ions of the time when the record was made. 
So there may be a step onward to be observed 
in the Gospels beyond that which we find in 
the acknowledged Epistles of Paul. / 

So much merely by way of introduction and 
explanation. 

We have observed up to the present time, 
in our study of the history of belief in immor- 
tality, that the people of the old world, before 
Christianity, almost universally held this be- 
lief. The exceptions have been so few as to 
be hardly worthy of our notice. The belief 
in some sort of continued existence after the 
fact we call death was practically universal 
from the beginning of human thought up to 
the birth of Christ But note another point 



Paul 65 

in connection with that. Death has not been 
regarded as anything desirable. It has been 
looked upon as a calamity. Going into the 
other world was not thought to be an ascent ; 
it was descent. The next life was poorer than 
this, not richer. The men who went down 
into the shades left behind them the pulsing, 
breathing life of the flesh. They became thin 
shadows. They left the blessed light of the 
sun, the fair blue heaven overhead. They left 
the green earth, the waving trees, the music 
of the brooks and of the waves upon the shore. 
They left the life of ambition, the fierce joy of 
strife and battle, the aims and hopes of future 
advance, all the joys of home, of companion- 
ship, of husband and wife, of children. They 
left all that made life seem sweetest and best, 
and went down into an underworld of shades. 
They lived, to be sure ; but it was only a 
kind of half-life, and, as I have said, not at all 
to be desired. But, as in the early twilight we 
hear a note in this direction, and another in 
that, of some half-wakened bird, that preludes 
and prophesies the outburst of song that 
shall accompany the dawn, so here and there, 
throughout the ancient world, we come upon 
a note now and then — from India, Persia, 
China — of hope, of cheer ; someone daring 



66 Life Beyond Death 

to believe that death is not so great a calamity- 
after all. But, for the most part, it is either a 
sort of stoic resignation, facing the inevitable 
and trying to believe that the inevitable must 
be somehow bearable, or else it is an utter 
succumbing to a fear of the shadow which 
cannot be escaped. The condition of the 
world may fairly be represented by those 
words of the New Testament where it speaks 
of men as "through fear of death all their 
lifetime subject to bondage." 

I wish to give you one splendid illustration 
of pre-Christian thought and dawning hope in 
regard to this matter of death. The noblest 
character — I suppose all of us are agreed — to 
be found in the ancient world is perhaps that 
of Socrates ; and there is no man who has 
spoken, if he be correctly represented by Plato, 
more sweetly, hopefully, grandly, in regard to 
death, than he. I wish to give you a specimen 
of that beginning of trust, voiced by Socrates, 
to be found in the pre-Christian world : 

" Those of us who think that death is an evil are in 
error. There is great reason to hope that death is a 
good." You see, he does not feel sure about it. " For 
one of two things, — either death is a state of nothingness 
and utter unconsciousness, or there is a migration of the 
soul from this world to another. 



Paul 67 

" Now, if there is no consciousness, but a sleep undis- 
turbed by dreams, death will be a gain ; for eternity is 
then but a single night. 

" But if death is the journey to another place, and 
there all the dead are, what good, O my friends, can be 
greater than this ? What would not a man give if he 
might converse with Orpheus and Musseus and Hesiod 
and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and 
again. I shall have a wonderful interest in there meet- 
ing and conversing with the heroes of old. 

" Above all, I shall then be able to continue my 
search into knowledge. What delight would there be in 
conversing with (the great and good) and asking them 
questions. 

" (And) besides being happier in that world than in 
this, they will be immortal, if what is said is true. 

" Wherefore, be of good cheer about death, and know 
of a certainty that no evil can happen to a good man 
either in life or after death. To die and be released (is) 
better for me." 

See what a striking forecast that is of the 
words of Paul, which I have taken as a text. 

" I am not angry with my condemners or 
with my accusers. They have done me no 
harm, although they did not intend to do me 
any good; and for this I may gently blame 
them." 

This, you know, is related as being what he 
said to his judges when about to drink the 
hemlock : 

" The hour of departure has arrived ; and 



68 Life Beyond Death 

we go our ways, — I to die, and you to live. 
Which is better God only knows." 

This is the magnificent utterance, the won- 
derful attitude, of the old Greek. 

But a new note is sounded with the coming 
of the Christian hope. In Paul's words there 
is no question : To die or to live, which is 
better God only knows. He has no question 
about it. And it is no stoic indifference with 
which he faces the fact of death. He defies 
Death, smiles in his face, clasps his hand as a 
friend, and looks forward eagerly to the time 
when he will be free from his duties and obli- 
gations here, and be permitted to take him by 
the hand and be led out into that larger and 
grander life. This is the attitude of Paul. 
" To die is gain," he says in another place ; 
and in another : " O death, where is thy sting ? 
O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to 
God which giveth us the victory through our 
Lord Jesus Christ." Paul, then, was looking 
forward to death as the gateway to the all- 
desired, the consummation of his highest and 
most brilliant hopes. 

It will be interesting for us now, I think, to 
note the general scheme of the world and of 
the universe, as Paul held it, how he came to 
hold these views, and just what they meant in 



Paul 69 

his time. We shall see, as we go on, that they 
meant something very different from what 
they mean in the ordinary use that we make 
of them to-day, or as interpreted in the creeds 
of the churches. 

What does Paul hold? He does not make 
much of it ; but, incidentally, we are perfectly 
certain that Paul thinks that before the crea- 
tion of the earth there had been a rebellion in 
heaven. On a certain date, at a specified 
time, Christ had been set forth, proclaimed the 
special Son and representative of God, ap- 
pointed the leader of the angels. And then 
Lucifer, — otherwise called Satan, the Devil, — 
through envy on account of thwarted ambi- 
tion, having hoped to fill this position him- 
self, rebels against God and the heavenly 
order, and leads a third part of the angels, 
who follow him in this rebellion ; and he is 
cast out of heaven. The blessed felicity of 
that place is no longer to be disturbed by dis- 
cord ; and so he is hurled down to the abyss, 
to the home, the place prepared for him. But 
meanwhile he occupies a position between the 
heavens above and the earth beneath ; that is, 
he is released from his imprisonment, is able 
to escape for the time, that he may tempt and 
work his will, so far as they submit to it, upon 



70 Life Beyond Death 

the men and women living here upon the 
earth. So the New Testament doctrine, gen- 
erally, and the doctrine of Paul is, that Satan, 
Lucifer, the Devil, is " the Prince of the Power 
of the Air." There is a kingdom of evil spir- 
its in the atmosphere about us, between the 
earth and the sky. 

This is the general idea which Paul held in 
regard to the rebellion in heaven and the 
kingdom of evil which the Devil set up in his 
attempt to thwart the purposes of God in the 
creation of this world. After this rebellion in 
heaven the world is created, the Garden east- 
ward in Eden. You know the story, — how 
man is tempted by this would-be leader of the 
hosts of heaven who still continues his warfare 
against God and His Christ and all good, and 
how he fell as the result of this temptation. 
And with this fall the apostle teaches that 
death, hitherto unknown in any world or any 
epoch, comes upon men. Death enters by the 
doorway which sin has opened. It is God's 
penalty for the evil which men have wrought. 

It would appear that Paul believed what we 
know to have been a common opinion of his 
time ; that, if there had been no sin, men 
would have lived, either forever here on this 
earth (as they could hardly have held if they 



Paul 7 1 

had thought a little deeply about the matter), 
or that, after they had lived an indefinite time 
here, they would be translated, perhaps trans- 
formed and spiritualised into another kind of 
being, and permitted to enter into the pres- 
ence of God in the heavens above. This was 
to have been the course of things, if there had 
been no sin ; but sin came, and then " death 
passed upon all men," to use the words of Paul, 
" for that all had sinned." 

Now what became of these persons who 
were thus subjects of death ? Where were 
they ? They were in the underworld. We must 
understand clearly if we wish to get the idea of 
Paul and make it real to us, what kind of uni- 
verse it was in which he lived. Paul's universe 
was a sort of three-story affair : there was this 
earth, the dome of blue above, and beyond 
that a little way was heaven, where God had 
His celestial court ; but no men were there. 
Not a man from the foundation of the world — 
with the possible exception of Enoch and 
Elijah — had ever entered the presence of God 
in heaven. And then, underneath the surface 
of this flat earth, the underworld, as approach- 
able as any island of the sea, if only a person 
could find out the way, — the underworld of 
the dead, a cavern, Sheol, Hades ; and all 



72 Life Beyond Death 

the dead, good and bad together, went down 
into this underworld. It was some thousands 
of years before the idea of separating this 
underworld into two parts entered the minds 
of the Hebrews. But by the time of Paul 
there was a place of suffering, called Gehenna, 
— that is the Greek form for the Valley of 
Hinnom, this being a place where the refuse 
of the city was cast out to be burned ; and so 
this is used as the figure of moral and spiritual 
refuse, the place of destruction. And on the 
other hand was Paradise, a place where the 
good souls waited until the end of their cap- 
tivity should come. 

All, then, the good and the bad, were held 
captive by death and shut up in this under- 
world. When were they to be released, and 
how, according to the belief of Paul ? It was 
the belief of the Hebrews in the later part of 
their history that at the coming of the Messiah 
all the Jews, at any rate all those who had be- 
lieved in the Messiah and had waited for him, 
were to be raised up from this underworld, re- 
clothed with their bodies and become subjects 
of the Messianic kingdom, permitted to live 
here in the glory of that time which they had 
seen in dream and hope far away, and which 
they had done their share in preparing for. 



Paul 73 

This was the general belief of the Hebrews. 
Paul, of course, shared this belief. We must 
remember that he was a Pharisee ; and, if 
there is any point in his creed concerning 
which we are in darkness, we shall be safe in 
supposing that he held the ordinary, Pharisaic 
doctrine relating to it. 

But a change came over the faith of Paul. 
He accepted at last the idea that Jesus was 
the Messiah the Jews had been so long look- 
ing for. But, at the advent, Jesus came when 
they were not expecting him. He came, too, 
as a feeble child : he grew up unknown ; and 
nothing strange had happened there at the 
time of his advent, — no resurrection of the 
dead, good or bad, — and he lived to be thirty 
years old before anybody found out that he 
was the Messiah. Then, as Paul believed, he 
was revealed to the inner few as the expected 
Christ. Paul believed that he was the Christ ; 
for, as you read his Epistles, you will notice 
that one of the great points in his preaching 
everywhere was his attempt to convince his 
Hebrew hearers that Jesus was the Christ, the 
Messiah. 

Nothing happened, then, at the advent. So 
far the general expectation of the Hebrews was 
disappointed. Now what change took place 



74 Life Beyond Death 

in their faith ? A belief arose in a second ad- 
vent. Jesus had been a different kind of Mes- 
siah from what they had expected : he had 
come to suffer and to die instead of to reign. 
But at last they came to hold that this was an 
atonement for sin, in order to break down and 
do away with the old Mosaic law, and that 
after his death (his atoning death of sacrifice) 
he was to come again. A second advent was 
looked for ; and at this second advent all the 
wonderful things were to happen which had 
been expected at the time of his first coming, 
on the part of the ordinary Jews. 

Now what did Paul believe was to happen ? 
First let me answer a preliminary question : 
When did Paul expect this second advent to 
take place ? It is very curious to see how 
people turn and torture and twist Scripture to 
bring it into accordance with their precon- 
ceived ideas ; but, if there is any one thing 
that is absolutely certain, it is that Paul and 
all the apostles and the early disciples, and the 
early churches generally, believed that Jesus 
was to come in the clouds of heaven to put an 
end to this present world dispensation, and to 
usher in the next epoch, and that he was to 
do it immediately — that is, at least within the 
generation then living. They preached that 



Paul 75 

he might come at any time. They were to 
look for him as a thief comes in the night, un- 
expectedly ; they were to watch ; they were to 
be ready. " In such an hour as ye think not 
the Son of man cometh " : as lightning shineth 
from one part of heaven to another, so the 
coming of the Son of man shall be. Paul 
talked as though this were to be immediately. 
All the disciples so talked. The New Testa- 
ment is on tiptoe of expectation. 

What did Paul expect to happen when he 
did come ? He expected that the world would 
be roused by the sound of the archangel's 
trump ringing from one end of heaven to the 
other, startling those that were not ready, not 
expecting it, and thrilling with joy those who 
had waited and were prepared. And what 
was to happen ? At the sound of that trump 
the dull ears of those that were in Hades were 
to become attentive and listen. The dead in 
Christ, those who had died believing and hop- 
ing in Christ, were to rise first. There is a 
curious illustration of the reality and vividness 
of this belief to be found in the Epistles to the 
Thessalonians. Evidently, the Thessalonian 
people had expected that all the believers were 
going to live until this second advent was made 
manifest. And they were disturbed when one 



76 Life Beyond Death 

after another died ; and they wrote to Paul 
and said : " What does this mean ? Are these 
persons that have suffered, been persecuted, 
and been waiting for the coming of Christ, to 
die, after all, and not see the glory in which 
they have believed ? " Then Paul writes them 
a comforting word. You will find it in the 
Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. He 
says : Do not be disturbed. Do not expect 
the coming too suddenly. There is to be a 
revelation of evil breaking loose and accom- 
plishing certain things before that coming. 
But the point for your consolation is this : 
those that are alive are not to prevent {pre- 
venio, the word meaning to come before) those 
that are asleep ; that is, those of us who are 
alive when Christ comes are not to be any bet- 
ter off than those who have died, because at 
the sound of that trump those who have be- 
lieved and waited for Christ are suddenly to 
rise, and we who are alive are to be changed 
in a moment, " in the twinkling of an eye." 
We are not to die ; but we are to pass through 
this miraculous transformation — put off our 
present bodies, be clothed with our spiritual 
bodies, join those who are raised from the 
dead, and " meet the Lord in the air." This is 
Paul's comfort to the Thessalonians, who won- 



Paul 77 

dered if they were going to lose anything by 
being dead before this marvellous advent took 
place. 

Now, I wish you to note what is of prime 
importance, — the significance of the fact of 
resurrection. Jesus was to do two things by 
his life, sufferings, and death, and his rising 
again from the dead. In the first place, he 
was to abolish the law. It had been found 
by trial that the law did not make people 
good : it only revealed to them their wicked- 
ness, their evil. They were unconscious of it 
without the law ; but the law, holding up its 
strict claim showed them what failures they 
were. So Paul said it was impossible to be 
saved by the law, because no one could keep 
it. The only hope was in the abolition of the 
law and the setting up of a kingdom of grace. 
The law made a terrible mistake when it put 
to death a perfect being. It abrogated itself 
by so doing, and became thenceforth a dead 
letter. So Christ abolished the law. The next 
thing he did was to bring "life and immor- 
tality to light." This is according to the opin- 
ion of Paul. Paul does not care anything 
about the physical resurrection of Jesus from 
the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. When he 
speaks of those who had seen the risen Jesus, 



78 Life Beyond Death 

he classes himself among them, although he 
distinctly says he never saw Jesus in the flesh. 
He saw him in a vision on the road to Damas- 
cus, — saw him, as he claimed, in his spiritual 
body. This is what Paul meant by seeing 
Jesus. 

But the thing that Paul insisted on was that 
Jesus was alive, and not dead ; that he had 
escaped from sheol, or hades, and ascended 
into heaven ; that he had broken the bonds of 
death through the power of the Father, so 
that death could no longer hold him ; and he 
had demonstrated the power of life by becom- 
ing — what ? The " first-fruits of them that 
sleep." In other words, note, Paul says that 
Jesus, or the Christ, was the first one from the 
foundation of the world who ever escaped from 
the prison-house of death, underground, and 
ascended into heaven. He was the first-fruits 
from the dead. 

I wish you to note here that Paul is a Unit- 
arian. Paul is not the kind of Unitarian that 
is known to-day. He is what we should call to- 
day, conforming to theological distinctions, an 
Arian. He believed in the pre-existence of 
Christ, that he had lived in heaven. But he 
distinctly says of him that he was the first- 
born among the creatures, "the first-born 



Paul 79 

of every creature " not the Creator ; not the 
original, primal God. He is the first-born of 
the creatures in his advent, the first-born from 
the dead in his resurrection, which demon- 
strates that men can be raised from the dead. 

And now, as illustrating Paul's belief con- 
cerning the Christ, and his general belief, 
let me call your attention to this important 
chapter, the famous fifteenth chapter of First ^ 
Corinthians. ■ I wonder that the people who 
believe in the literal resurrection of the body 
should not have noted the teaching of Paul, 
or, noticing it, should have paid no attention 
to it. Paul distinctly and definitely says that 
the body that is to be raised is not the body 
that was buried. He says : You plant a grain 
of wheat. That which is raised is not that 
grain of wheat : there is some connection be- 
tween that and the new life ; but this is only a 
bare grain. God raises that grain of wheat 
into a glorious body, infinitely finer and fairer , 
than that which is buried ; but it is another 
body such as it pleases God to give. So he 
says ; In the resurrection of the dead that body 
which is buried in the grave is not to be raised. 

And I wish you to note now — for I cannot 
lay too much emphasis on it, it has been so 
many years utterly forgotten or misunderstood 



80 Life Beyond Death 

or misinterpreted — that the resurrection in the 
New Testament means always the resurrection 
from this underworld, the coming up again out 
of hades, or sheol, the world of shadow, the 
prison-house of the dead. It d oesL^not^mean^ 
the raising up of the body ; and it does not 
mean what we are apt to interpret it as mean- 
ing to-day, the mere rising of the soul in the 
moment of death. Paul did not believe that 
the soul was raised at the moment of death : 
he believed that it went to hades, this prison- 
house of the dead ; but the resurrection means, 
literally, a rising again, — not an ascent, not a 
coming up, but a rising again after going down, 
the rising up from sheol, or hades, of those 
who have descended there at the moment of 
death. 

This is the resurrection which Paul teaches ; 
and it is this resurrection — the significance of 
which lies in the fact that the power of death 
is broken — that he preaches in regard to 
Christ. He tells us that, when Christ escaped 
from hades and ascended on high, he led with 
him a multitude of captives accompanying his 
ascent, the first-fruits of those who had been 
in sheol for so long. The significance, then, 
of the resurrection according to Paul was that 
the power of death had been broken; and 



Paul 8 1 

henceforth men were delivered from that 
power. 

I wish now to raise the question for a moment 
as to whether Paul gives us material out of 
which to construct with any definiteness the 
other life in which he believed. There is 
nothing very clear. As illustrating the general 
subject, let me leave Paul for a moment, and 
take up one or two passages written by other 
writers than Paul in different parts of the New 
Testament. The author of Second Peter — 
we do not know who he was — tells us that the 
world and everything connected with it is to be 
burned up. Some have supposed that this 
meant that it was to be consumed entirely ; 
others that it was to pass through a furnace of 
fire, be refined like gold, and come out cleansed 
and glorified, — a fit abode for the just. Others 
speak of the first heaven and the first earth 
as passing away, and new heavens and a new 
earth as being created. Others speak of the 
firmament as being rolled up like a scroll, and 
put away out of sight forever. And the author 
of the Book of Revelation gives us a beautiful, 
poetical picture of a fair city, pearl-gated, gold- 
streeted, filled with rivers of life and trees of 
life, descending out of heaven from God, and 
resting upon the earth. 



82 Life Beyond Death 

We cannot with any certainty tell just what 
Paul's idea was. From all the hints we can 
gather, I am inclined to believe that Paul 
trusted that these resurrected souls should by 
and by be admitted into the presence-chamber 
of God in the heavens ; for he speaks in one 
place of his having been caught up in a vision 
into the third heaven, and of having seen 
wonderful things and heard wonderful words, 
which he was not permitted to repeat. 

We are glad to find that Paul was a Univer- 
salist. It is very significant how strong his 
language is in this direction, and also how 
generally it has been overlooked by those who 
could find it in their hearts to believe the other 
horrible creed. Paul teaches that even the 
Jews — who were rejected on account of their 
rejection of Christ — were not to be finally 
passed by. They were rejected only for a 
time, until the fulness of the Gentiles was 
brought in. Then they also were to be 
gathered into one fold of God. Paul teaches 
with no questionable note that all souls — good 
and bad, Jew and Gentile, bond and free — are 
to be gathered at last into the one fold, with 
the one Shepherd. 

And note that here, in connection with 
this Universalist tone, he records also his 



Paul 83 

Unitarian teaching. He says : Then comes 
the end, the climax of this great drama that 
has had the world for a stage, mountains for 
pillars, clouds for curtains, angels for specta- 
tors. Then comes the end, when Christ shall 
deliver up his kingdom to God the Father. 
He must reign until he has put everything 
under his feet — except God, the Power who 
put everything under him. When he has 
done that, when all rebellion, all power, all evil 
that opposes, is put down and is under the 
feet of the Christ, then he himself is to deliver 
up his kingdom to God, even the Father, and 
be subject to Him ; and God is to be all and in 
all. This is the magnificent scheme of human 
history, and its outcome, that is taught us by 
the apostle Paul. 

I wish now at the end to call your attention 
to two or three points that are instructive and 
full of meaning, and that throw light upon 
Paul's position. Paul teaches a doctrine, let me 
say in the first place, of utter unworldliness. He 
says we are not to be conformed to this world : 
we are to be transformed by the working of our 
minds, and lead a spiritual life. If we have 
money, we are to be as though we had none ; if 
we are poor, we are not to be troubled by that ; 
if we occupy a high position, it does not make 



84 Life Beyond Death 

any difference ; if we occupy a low position, 
what matter ? You remember that the slave- 
holders counted Paul as an ally, because he 
advised the escaped slave to return to his 
master : and I believe the old Abolitionists 
found it very hard to believe in Paul. But in 
the light of this consideration of Paul's doctrine 
we have found it divine, sweet, lovely in every 
way. What does it matter ? Paul says. The 
second advent is nigh. It may be next week, 
next year, in two or three years, very soon, 
at any rate. What does it matter whether 
you are married or single, whether you are 
rich or poor, whether you are slave or master ! 
These things are of no account. Bond and 
free, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, all one in 
Christ, all brothers in him. These earthly 
conditions are unimportant. It is not worth 
while to stop to try to change the social or 
political order. God will take care of that at 
the second advent, which is imminent at any 
moment. The more important thing for him 
to do was to proclaim this gospel over the 
world. 

Note, in the second place, how superior Paul 
is to all suffering. He says, suppose you are 
sick, suppose you are persecuted, you are in 
pain, in tribulation : what matters it ? Or he 



Paul 85 

says, " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither 
hath entered into the heart of man, the things 
which God has prepared for those who love 
Him." Why worry about these things, then? 
" These light afflictions, which are but for a 
moment, work a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory." Do you not see? If 
we believed that Christ was coming in a glory 
to flame from one end of heaven to the other, 
sounding the trump, raising the dead, leading 
us all into his eternal kingdom, — if that was a 
vivid belief of ours, — should we stop to whine 
or fret or trouble much over present con- 
ditions, whether we were sick or well, whether 
we were afflicted or free from affliction ? Note 
the point of view of Paul. His attitude to- 
wards suffering and sickness and evil becomes 
grandly rational. 

One other point. Here you see for the first 
time in the history of the world, granting his 
belief was reasonable, a magnificent triumph 
over death. And it was this victory over death 
more than anything else, than all things else 
combined, which gave young Christianity its 
victory over Rome. Why was it that, when 
these few feeble, unknown, despised disciples 
of an unknown peasant of Nazareth went forth 
into the mightiest empire of the world, they 



86 Life Beyond Death 

felt confident of taking possession ? They 
visited city after city, preaching their news to 
the Jews who would listen, and then to the 
people of all nations ; and they were perse- 
cuted. Persecuted, why ? Not because Rome 
cared for any man's religion ; but because a 
Christian could not consistently take part in 
the Roman public worship which Rome held 
to be the duty of every citizen. Rome per- 
secuted the Christians, not primarily for their 
religion, but because they were bad Romans. 
These men could not worship with the Ro- 
mans, because they had one Master in heaven, 
and Him only they worshipped ; but they faced 
the mightiest power of earth, and they did it 
eagerly, with joy, with a song on their lips. 
What cared they, if they were sent to the wild 
beasts in the arena ? They even coveted mar- 
tyrdom. There are letters of certain old bish- 
ops, travelling through the empire on their 
way to Rome, who are anxious lest somehow 
or other they may escape martyrdom. They 
wanted to meet death. They wanted to be 
among the distinguished company in the other 
world of those who had died for the faith. 
Nothing that the Caesar or any of his legions 
could do could strike even a momentary terror 
to their hearts ; for they looked in the face of 



Paul S7 

death, and they saw the coming of the heav- 
enly legions, they heard the shout of the arch- 
angel, they listened for the trump that was to 
sound, they saw everywhere the dead rising 
from this underworld, they anticipated the 
transforming touch of the divine influence 
which was to clothe them with immortal life 
and beauty and glory ; and they looked for- 
ward to this as the one crown of a faithful life. 
This, then, this heartening and giving hope 
to man, was that which conquered Rome ; for, 
as the centurions, the officers, the soldiers, the 
citizens, saw how men could live and love each 
other and serve each other, and how they did 
not care for riches or poverty, for high station 
or low, for pain, or for death, they said, What 
is the strange secret these men have found 
which delivers them from all that we have 
feared or cared for, and makes them victorious 
even in the face of the last dread enemy ? So 
at last Paul and his followers conquered the 
empire ; and, by this belief in the immortal 
life, they changed the face of civilisation and 
gave us the modern world. 



V 

JESUS AND IMMORTALITY 

THE Second Epistle to Timothy, the first 
chapter, part of the tenth verse reads. 
"He hath abolished death, and hath brought 
life and immortality to light through the 
gospel." 

We do not know who the writer of this 
Epistle may have been. Tradition ascribes it 
to Paul. At any rate, the writer holds sub- 
stantially the Pauline view ; and, when he 
says that Christ has abolished death and 
brought life and immortality to light, he 
speaks as one holding substantially the same 
ideas of the universe, of death and the future, 
as those which are set forth, in the preceding 
chapter, as belonging to Paul. 

It seems strange at first sight that anyone 
should speak of Christ as having brought to 
light, or revealed, the immortal life, when, as 
we have seen, belief in this immortal life has 
been held from the very beginning of the 
world. Not a tribe, not a people, has been 



Jesus 89 

found who did not hold it in one form or an- 
other. In what sense, then, can the writer 
have meant to say that Christ brought it to 
light ? The matter becomes clear when we 
remember that this writer, whoever he may 
have been, was unfamiliar with the historical 
facts which we have so briefly reviewed con- 
cerning the beliefs of other peoples ; that he 
writes as a Hebrew, in the light of the Hebrew 
tradition. And, according to that tradition, 
all men from the beginning of time, at death, 
had gone down into this underworld of which 
I have spoken ; and all of them had remained 
there until Christ, by the power conferred upon 
him as a gift from the Father, proved himself 
stronger than death, broke through its bonds, 
escaped, and led with him a multitude of those 
who up to that time had been held captive in 
this region below. 

With that view of the universe, then, it ap- 
peared literally true that Christ was the one 
who first brought life and immortality to light. 

In considering the opinions of Jesus we find 
a difficulty that did not present itself while we 
were dealing with the opinions of Paul. In 
treating these opinions we have Paul's own 
words to deal with. We have his letters, the 
clear and definite expression of his opinions. 



90 Life Beyond Death 

But, when we come to deal with the Gospels, 
which were written, some of them, a good 
many years after the composition of the Paul- 
ine Epistles, we find ourselves front to front 
with this difficulty ; it is easy enough to out- 
line what the Gospels say concerning death 
and the future life ; but we are not quite sure 
always that we are dealing with the precise 
and personal opinions of Jesus ; for we have 
no letters of Jesus. He wrote, so far as we 
know, not one single word, — left behind him 
no records except in the affectionate memories 
of those who had been his companions and 
followers. See now how great this difficulty is. 
It is about thirty-four years since Mr. Lin- 
coln died. He lived in an age of printing, of 
shorthand reporting. He lived most conspicu- 
ous, lifted up in the eyes of mankind. His 
most trivial sayings and doings were noted. 
It was supposed that they would become a 
part of history. There are people living to-day 
who were intimately acquainted with him ; 
and yet note this strange fact. The other day, 
about the time when his birthday was cele- 
brated, many sermons were preached in many 
different denominational pulpits in this city 
concerning the religious opinions of Mr. Lin- 
coln. When a Unitarian was preaching the 



Jesus 9 1 

sermon, Mr. Lincoln was a Unitarian. In 
Universalist pulpits he was a Universalist. 
In the orthodox churches he was a good ortho- 
dox. In other words, thirty-four years after 
his death, people are already disputing as to 
his opinions, as to the religious theories he 
held, and as to what he said and did on a hun- 
dred different occasions. 

Suppose now, for a moment, that there had 
been no printing-press at the time of Lincoln, 
that there had been no shorthand reporting, 
that he had never written a single letter or a 
single document of any kind, — do you not see 
how much greater would have been the prob- 
able confusion and contradiction as to what he 
really said, as to what he really did, as to what 
he really believed ? 

This is the position in which we are in re- 
gard to the sayings, the doings, the opinions 
of Jesus, only intensified by the fact that he 
lived two thousand years ago, — lived in the 
midst of an ignorant and very superstitious 
people, lived when there was no clear-cut dis- 
tinction in the mind of any one between the 
natural and the supernatural, lived when any- 
thing might happen and when nothing was 
strange, or when, the stranger it appeared, the 
more likely it was to be accepted. 



92 Life Beyond Death 

I speak of this so that you may note that 
there is possibly a very wide distinction be- 
tween the teaching of the Gospels and the 
real opinions of Jesus. We know, for example, 
that Plato puts upon the lips of Socrates time 
after time his own opinions, or perhaps the 
opinions of Socrates modified and coloured, so 
that it is difficult to tell where Plato begins and 
Socrates leaves off. We know the same to be 
true in regard to the record concerning the 
life and the teachings of the Master. One 
great principle it will be well for you to bear 
in mind. If Jesus is reported as saying some- 
thing which we know to have coincided with 
the popular opinion of his time, if he is reported 
as doing something that everybody expected 
the Messiah would do when he came, if he is 
reported as holding some opinion that the 
popular thought attributed to him as befitting 
the Messianic office, then you may be a little 
suspicious of this report. 

That is, if there is any mistake anywhere, it 
would be likely to be in the direction of the 
popular expectation. But, when Jesus is re- 
ported as holding some opinion which was 
distinct, which was new, which cut across 
popular prejudices or went contrary to the 
expectation of his time, then you may feel 



Jesus 93 

practically certain that it is true that Jesus said 
or did that particular thing. 

I needed to refer to this because sometimes 
in this chapter I shall be speaking of what I 
think Jesus really said, and sometimes I shall 
recur to the general testimony of the Gospels 
without drawing this particular line of de- 
markation ; but you need to keep the idea in 
mind, if you wish to have clear thinking con- 
cerning what Jesus really held and really 
taught. 

Now, I wish to note one other point. In 
view of the popular idea as to the nature and 
office of the Christ, one of the most remarkable 
things to me is his silences, his reticences. If 
he was what the popular theologians have held 
him to be, it seems very striking and strange in- 
deed that he did not say certain things about cer- 
tain matters concerning which he was perfectly 
silent. Let me instance two or three points. 

It was the popular belief of his age that 
there had been a rebellion in heaven, and that 
the leader of this rebellion, with his followers, 
had been cast out into the abyss. Now, 
according to the popular conception of the 
office of Jesus, he was there. He was the 
first-born of all the angels. He was the bright 
archangel who led the divine power that put 



94 Life Beyond Death 

down and cast out these forces of evil. And 
yet he never anywhere makes the slightest 
allusion to it. He does not seem to have 
known anything about it. If he did, he did 
not consider it a matter of any importance, or, 
at any rate, did not consider it worth while 
that we should know about it. On this point 
he is utterly silent. Indeed, does it not seem 
to you a little significant and strange, if he had 
lived in heaven for uncounted ages before he 
appeared here, that he never says anything 
about what kind of place it was ? Even in the 
most intimate conversations with his disciples 
he does not allude to it. The silence seems to 
me very significant. 

Another point concerning which he is equally 
reticent : he does not say a word about the 
Garden of Eden, the creation of Adam and 
Eve, the temptation, or the fall. And yet, 
according to the popular doctrine, he came 
here on purpose to deliver us from the results 
of these ; but he says nothing about them. I 
do not say that he did not believe this teaching : 
I simply say it is strange that he has nowhere 
made any mention of it. 

Another point : Paul teaches, you know, 
with such force that he makes it the pivot on 
which his whole scheme of salvation turns, that 



Jesus 95 

death came into the world as the result of 
Adam's sin. Jesus says nothing whatever 
about the origin of death. He takes it for 
"granted, of course ; but he does not teach that 
it was the result of sin. He is utterly silent 
concerning the whole great, thrilling question. 
We may probably presume that he held this 
belief, because we know it was the popular 
belief of his time. Yet Jesus rose superior 
to the popular belief of his time in so many 
and in such marked directions that possibly 
we may find this to be only an illustration of 
that grand superiority which he so frequently 
manifested. 

Now, let us turn and look the other way for 
a moment. What does Jesus teach as to the 
place of abode of the departed spirits ? He 
teaches definitely nothing at all. He does 
make allusions to it, and these seem to show 
that he held the popular belief. For example, 
on the cross, when the penitent thief confesses 
his sins and prays for mercy, he says to him, 
" To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise ! " 
And Paradise, as we have seen, was one of the 
divisions of the underground world, the abode 
of departed spirits, the place where the good 
were permitted to go ; while Gehenna was the 
place of abode of the bad. 



g6 Life Beyond Death 

I think I have already intimated to you that 
the people held that these two places were 
very close together, — Paradise and Gehenna ; 
and this appears to be the thought of Jesus in 
that famous parable of his concerning Dives 
and Lazarus. There, you will remember, 
Dives is in Gehenna, in the place of torment, 
suffering, and longing for at least one drop of 
water to cool his tongue ; and he looks and 
sees Lazarus in Paradise, across the gulf fixed 
between the two places. 

In order to understand what it means for 
the blessed to be in the bosom of Abraham, 
you need to recall the attitude of those par- 
taking of a feast in the olden time. They did 
not sit in chairs around a table, but reclined 
upon couches, or upon one long couch, lean- 
ing on their left elbows near to the table, while 
their feet extended away from the table to- 
wards the other part of the room. You will 
see, in the light of this attitude, how easy it 
was for the penitent Magdalen to come and 
wash the feet of Jesus with her tears and wipe 
them with the hairs of her head while he was 
reclining, not sitting, at the table. The inti- 
mate friend of some one thus at the board 
would be next to him, just in front of him, able 
to turn and look into his face, and, as it were, 



Jesus 97 

lean upon his bosom. And this, of course, 
was the sign of the greatest favour that could 
be conferred upon one, — to be thus intimately 
related to a great or distinguished person on a 
festival occasion like this. Heaven — or the 
abode of the blessed — is frequently described 
under this figure of a feast, and those that 
are saved are spoken of as reclining in the 
bosom of Abraham. So Jesus represented 
Lazarus, the beggar, as at last lifted to this 
sublime felicity, and Dives, the rich man, so 
near to him that he can see him — so near that 
they can converse back and forth over the gulf 
of separation. This throws light upon the 
conception which Jesus held of the under- 
world, and shows that he shared the opinions 
of his time, or, at least, was willing to use 
those opinions for illustrating his truth when 
he gave utterance to this remarkable parable. 

The only other phase that I need to note is 
one which will lead us, significantly, to a higher 
teaching on the part of Jesus than we have 
noted in regard to his disciples. Notice his 
conversation with those who were about him 
just before the crucifixion, as it is recorded in 
the Gospel according to John. He says that 
he is going away, he is going to the Father ; 
that he goes to prepare a place for them ; and 



98 Life Beyond Death 

that, when he has prepared a place for them, 
he will come again and receive them to him- 
self, that they may always be together. You 
see, he touches here a point which is often 
mooted in the theological discussions of the 
world, as to our recognising friends who have 
preceded us into this other life. If we are to 
accept the teaching of Jesus as of authority, 
then those who have been intimately associated 
here will naturally gravitate together in that 
spiritual life and will renew the felicity and the 
sweetness of their old-time associations. He is 
coming to take his friends to the place he has 
prepared for them ; and they are ever to be 
together in the sweetness of a love untouched 
by pain, unshadowed by the possibility of 
another separation through death. 

But now there is a very striking thing to be 
noted. In the midst of this conversation he 
says, " Whither I go ye know, and the way ye 
know." But Thomas said, " We know not 
whither thou goest, and how can we know the 
way ? " Then what does he answer ? He does 
not say that it is in the underworld ; he does 
not say it is above the sky ; he does not say it 
is off on some distant star in space ; he does 
not point in any direction, east, west, north, or 
south. He simply says, " I am the way." 



Jesus 99 

Spiritually interpreted, meaning simply this 
spiritual, divine truth which he embodied, 
which he represented, and which he had been 
teaching, — this is the way to the eternal 
felicity, this is the way to the home of the 
blessed. 

You see he is touching on mystical ground, 
he is coming to the utterance of a most pro- 
found and significant spiritual truth. For, in 
another place, when he is speaking of eternal 
life, he does not say it is the living in a walled 
city, or in a beautiful palace, or in the midst of 
fadeless trees and luscious fruits. He says, 
" This is eternal life, to know Thee, the only 
true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou has 
sent." ^IjtLOther words, eternal life is a quality, 
in the teaching of Jesus. Jt_is a matter of 
_characier r it is spiritual unfolding, it is insight, 
it is being, — not simply place nor surrounding. 
I must touch on one subject for a moment, 
though giving no decisive opinion on it, be- 
cause I hold none. The parable of Dives and 
Lazarus suggests inevitably the question as to 
whether Jesus believed not only in the immor- 
tal life, but in the immortal death, — whether 
he believed in eternal punishment, in other 
words. You know very well what a conflict 
of opinion there has been in regard to this 



ioo Life Beyond Death 

matter. Jesus uses words which can very 
easily be interpreted in favour of endless pun- 
ishment, or, at least, words that can be so in- 
terpreted are attributed to him. But we must 
remember two or three things. 

In the first place, we are never quite certain 
as to whether these opinions may not have 
been coloured by the belief of the age when 
the Gospels took their present shape. Then 
we must remember that Jesus was an Oriental : 
he spoke in figure, he used poetical expres- 
sions ; and the tendency of the Protestant 
theologian is to harden these flowers and figures 
of speech down into cold, hard, literal prose. 
Let me suggest to you this matter by recur- 
ring to the words of Mozoomdar, the famous 
East Indian seer, when he was in this country 
two years ago. " Jesus," he said, " was an Ori- 
ental ; and we Orientals understand him. He 
spoke in figure. We understand him. He was 
a mystic. You take him literally : you make 
an Englishman of him." This was his judg- 
ment as to the way in which we are apt to 
interpret the sayings of Jesus. We must re- 
member that, then. And how much of this is 
simply striking poetical figure of speech, and 
how much is literal verity, it is very difficult 
for us at present to say. 



Jesus 101 

And then we must remember that Jesus, a 
great many times, was talking of the end of 
the age, the great transition that was believed 
to be imminent at the time of the coming of 
the Messiah, and not of the final condition 
of things when the heavens and the earth 
should have passed away. 

It seemed to me necessary to recur to this 
point for a moment ; but I am inclined to be- 
lieve that Jesus held such a doctrine of the 
infinite love of the Father as would preclude 
the possibility of holding to that which seems 
to us the inevitable and eternal contradiction 
of that love. And let me say again, as a mat- 
ter of perfect honesty, that, if the doctrine of 
eternal punishment was clearly and unmistak- 
ably taught on every leaf of the Bible and on 
every leaf of all the Bibles of all the world, I 
could not believe a word of it. I should ap- 
peal from these misconceptions of even the 
seers and the great men to the infinite and 
eternal Good, who only is God, and who only 
on such terms could be worshipped. 

I must refer now to that which is in some 
ways the very central teaching of Jesus; and 
you will see that, though it appears to be 
going away from our theme for a moment, it 
is coming back to the very heart of it. The 



102 Life Beyond Death 

one thing that Jesus preached and taught first 
and foremost, in the presence of which every- 
thing else was subsidiary, was his doctrine of 
the kingdom of God. His first word is, "The 
kingdom of heaven is at hand." And this doc- 
trine of the kingdom he preaches first, last, 
and all the time. It was to set up this king- 
dom that, he tells us, he came. 

It is very curious to note what a strange 
transformation the teaching of Jesus has un- 
dergone at the hands of those who have 
claimed to be his interpreters. The kingdom 
of God in the modern world, the perfect king- 
dom of God, is the few people who belong to 
the particular church of the one who happens 
to be writing about it, or those churches which 
are in general sympathy with it ; while the 
final, complete salvation which Jesus had in 
mind when he spoke of the kingdom of God 
and its citizens, has been postponed to an- 
other world. We look for a perfect condition 
of things only after death. Jesus looked for 
it here. There is no slightest reason whatever 
for supposing that Jesus expected the perfect 
kingdom of heaven, of which he talked, to be 
established anywhere else except on this poor 
old earth of ours. That judgment scene of his, 
where he represents the conditions of entering 



Jesus 103 

into that kingdom, is worthy of our notice. 
What does he say about the conditions ? 

Now, I am not going to say a word against 
church or Bible, ritual or service. But I wish 
you to see carefully this : when Jesus is dis- 
cussing the terms of admission to his perfect 
kingdom, he does not say a word about belong- 
ing to a church, does not refer to it. He does 
not say a word about your belief, as to whether 
or no you have any creed, or as to whether, if 
you have, it is correct. No reference to it. He 
does not say anything about a sacrament. He 
does not refer to the Bible, to reading it or 
neglecting it ; not a hint as to prayer, — abso- 
lutely not one word concerning any of those 
things which are ordinarily set off by them- 
selves and classed as religious duties. The 
only condition of admittance to his kingdom 
of heaven, which he has come to set up, is 
simple human goodness, — not the slightest 
hint of anything else. 

And where is this kingdom to be established ? 
Right here. He says, " The kingdom of 
heaven cometh not by observation. If they 
say, Lo, here, or Lo, there, pay no attention 
to them ; for the kingdom of God is within 
you," or, as it may equally well be translated, 
^^xid note that it does not essentially change 



io4 Life Beyond Death 

its meaning, — " is among you." That is, the 
kingdom of God is right here already; it is be- 
gun, it is in any true and noble heart. 

This chimes in with the doctrine of his con- 
versation with the woman of Samaria. He 
says, It is not in this mountain, Gerizim, where 
you worship, it is not in Jerusalem, it is not in 
any particular place in the world where shrines 
are set up and special rites celebrated, that you 
can find God. " God is Spirit ; and they that 
worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in 
truth." And His kingdom is wherever a single 
heart loves and worships in spirit and in truth. 
It is right here in this world. 

And now note one more point. When is 
the change coming that is to set up this king- 
dom? For, contradictory as it may seem, if 
the reports of Jesus are accurately made, he 
teaches that this kingdom is not a matter of 
slow growth, spreading from one heart to 
another as goodness naturally grows, by con- 
tagion, but it is to be set up by divine inter- 
vention at his own second coming, at a time 
when all nature is to be convulsed, the stars 
are to fall from heaven, everything is to be 
shaken. Then the trumpet is to sound ; and 
he, accompanied by his legions of angels, is to 
appear in the sky, and the old is to pass away 



Jesus 105 

and the new is to be established. He says 
definitely that " This generation shall not pass 
away until all these things be fulfilled." 

I have very serious doubt myself as to 
whether Jesus did say this. We know this to 
have been the popular belief of his time ; and, 
very likely, this popular belief gets into the 
reported saying, when he himself did not use 
the precise language that is here imputed to 
him. But, at any rate, we know that he did 
teach the immediate coming of this kingdom, 
that it was to be established here on earth, 
and that the simple, human, lovable, good 
were to be its citizens. 

Now, at the end, I have two or three points 
which I wish to make, which I believe to be 
only fair and just and true, as pointing to the 
very heart and significance of the teaching of 
Jesus. I have already touched on the matter ; 
but I wish to emphasise it by setting it apart 
as a point by itself. Jesus teaches that the 
eternal life is a matter of quality, of character, 
and that there are people all around us now 
living the eternal life ; that it is not a question 
simply of duration. If we are to take these 
words of Jesus with the full power of their 
meaning, a man might keep on living forever 
and never know anything about the eternal 



106 Life Beyond Death 

life ; as, for example, you can conceive of an 
animal, a horse, or a dog, as living on in- 
definitely, but as knowing nothing of any high 
human life. 

This eternal life is of higher grade, of finer 
quality than the ordinary life of men and wo- 
men. And what is the essence of it? It is 
that the person comes to live in those things 
which are eternal, which are deathless in their 
very nature, which are divine, partaking of the 
divine quality. Paul says that knowledge, for 
example, can pass away. In other words, if I 
live, I may be perfect in my knowledge of the 
geography of this planet ; but, suppose I move 
to another planet, that is of no more value to 
me. So a large part of the knowledge over 
which we labour may be of a great deal of im- 
portance to us to-day, and yet not permanent 
in its nature. But Paul says that faith and 
hope and love abide. These are the things that 
last. All those divine qualities and character- 
istics that make us like God, — these are the 
things that are imperishable, that endure for- 
ever and ever. And the man that comes up 
to the high level of this kind of life, and tastes 
these things, is tasting to-day the eternal life. 

Thus it is in accord, I think, with the deep- 
est teaching of Jesus that we should remember 



Jesus 107 

how shallow and false our conception of a 
future life is. There is no such thing as a 
" future " life in the sense in which we talk 
about it. There is no past except in our 
memory. There is no to-morrow except in 
our anticipation. The whole universe lives 
this instant, and only this instant. We are in 
the immortal life now. If we are naturally 
immortal, death will make no change in us : it 
is a mere incident in our career. 

So Jesus teaches, I think, that the eternal 
life, being a quality of character, exists to-day. 
It is not something to be waited for. Our 
friends, for example, if they are alive any- 
where, are alive at all, are alive this minute. 
They are not alive in the future somewhere 
any more than a friend who has gone to 
Europe is living in a future life. 

Do not let us be deluded by the superficial 
meaning of words. We are the children of 
God. We are immortal this moment ; and, 
though here on this planet, and encased in 
these bodies, we are living the immortal life. 
Let us rise to the level, then, of what Jesus 
means by the eternal life, and be worthy of it. 

And there is another thing, which we seem 
to suppose (those of us who believe in it at all) 
to have been peculiar to the dispensation of 



108 Life Beyond Death 

two thousand years ago. This every-day, 
common-place world of hopes and fears, meet- 
ings and partings, joys and sorrows, — this 
world, according to the Gospel story, is encased 
in a world of spirit, immersed in it, surrounded 
by it as by an atmosphere. I am not now say- 
ing that I believe this, I am not saying that 
you believe it. I say it is the Gospel con- 
ception. 

Note, before Jesus comes into this world at 
all, messengers from the Unseen appear, and 
report that he is coming. He is guarded in 
his childhood, he is watched over all the way 
along. When he appears at the Jordan for 
baptism, out of the closely enfolding invisible 
comes the appearance of a dove, figuring forth 
the Spirit ; and a voice is heard saying, " This 
is my beloved Son." He gets weary : messen- 
gers out of the Unseen appear and minister to 
him. And so all the way along, — appearances, 
visions, voices. His disciples go one day with 
him up on a mountain-top, and suddenly they 
see him surrounded by a glory that they have 
never seen before ; and, as they gaze, two 
forms that they recognise afterwards as being 
Moses and Elijah, appear and talk with him. 
They disappear again, the vision vanishes. 
After his resurrection some of his disciples are 



Jesus 109 

walking along a road towards Emmaus ; and 
he suddenly appears, and talks to them. Then 
he reveals himself to them in breaking of 
bread, and disappears again. On another oc- 
casion he appears suddenly to his disciples 
while they are behind closed doors in an up- 
per room, and then fades away out of their 
sight. And after he has finally disappeared 
into the invisible, two shining ones appear to 
the disciples as they watch his departure, and 
tell them that it will not be a great while be- 
fore they see his return out of the invisible 
again. 

The point I wish you to notice is, that, ac- 
cording to the conception of the Gospels, the 
fundamental Christian conception of the other 
world is that it is close by, all around us ; and 
the life of Jesus is full of visions, of voices, 
appearances, manifestations, warnings, help- 
ings, guidings, from this other life, in which, 
as I said, the universe seems to be immersed. 

So the real life, according to the teaching of 
Jesus, is this spirit life, this life for which we 
are now in training, this life which deals with 
the high and fine, and sweet and pure, this life 
that is one of love, of service, of self-forget- 
fulness, of consecration to others ; and the 
things that people care the most about, are apt 



no Life Beyond Death 

to think the most of, are perishable, and pass 
away with the using. The eternal life, accord- 
ing to Jesus, is the only true human life, the 
one to which we ought to consecrate ourselves 
here and now. 



VI 

THE OTHER WORLD OF THE 
MIDDLE AGES 

IF we could wake up for a little while in the 
Middle Ages, — say the tenth, eleventh, 
twelfth or thirteenth century, — I fear we should 
not find it a pleasant time in which to be alive. 
The world was a scene of political disorder, 
contention on every hand. But, worse than 
that, it was brooded over by supernatural 
fears, — -fears wide and dark-winged, that 
shadowed the lives and shut out the sunshine 
from the souls of men. God was away off in 
the empyrean, never seen, rarely felt to be 
nigh to men. He was to be approached only 
through a series of mediators. First, indeed, 
the Church had taught that His Son, the second 
person in the Trinity, had come to reveal Him. 
But it was hundreds of years since the Son 
was here ; and he had withdrawn into the 
heavens, and was now seated at the right 
hand of God. And, when next he came, it 

in 



ii2 Life Beyond Death 

was not to be chiefly on an errand of mercy, 
but as the severe Judge of all the earth. 

Human hearts, feeling the need of some- 
thing tender and human in the divinity, had 
transformed Mary from being merely a peasant 
woman of Nazareth into the Mother of God. 
And they felt that they could appeal to her 
tenderness and love ; and they could hope 
that she would intercede with the Son, who 
would intercede with the Father, who might 
come to care for them. 

And then, as Mary sometimes was far 
away, as she grew and was exalted into a 
dignity that was attached to her as the Mother 
of God, they drew nigh to certain saints, — 
men who had been distinguished for charity 
and kindliness and love when on earth, and 
who had been set apart as specially holy and 
helpful since they had entered into the Un- 
seen. And so, as I say, God was a long way off, 
only to be approached through saints, through 
the Virgin, through Jesus. 

But, while God was at a distance, the devils 
were very, very near. The air about the earth 
was supposed to be full of these evil, tempting 
spirits. They caused shipwreck at sea and 
sudden death on land ; they blighted the 
crops ; they smote and blasted in the tempests ; 



Middle Ages 113 

they took possession of the bodies and the 
souls of men. They were ever ready — as in 
the case of Faust — to enter into a compact 
with a man, bestowing upon him whatever 
earthly blessing he might desire, and, in lieu 
of that, taking a mortgage on his soul. 

The devils, then, were very near ; and God 
was very far. 

The two worlds interpenetrated each other, 
but more frequently, perhaps, for evil than for 
good. Not always for evil, for sometimes the 
Virgin Mary was seen, at least in a vision, 
sometimes the angels manifested themselves 
for human help ; but the two worlds, as I said, 
interpenetrated each other. And this, note, 
all the way along from the very beginning of 
human history. In every religion there has 
been possible communion between the seen 
and the unseen. 

In order now that we may comprehend the 
kind of world that the people lived in, during 
the Middle Ages, and that you may see how 
natural it was that the ideas I have already 
spoken of were popularly held, I need to 
picture to you in outline the universe as it was 
believed to be during these centuries. And I 
take for my purpose the world of Dante. I 
do this merely because Dante has given it to 

8 



ii4 Life Beyond Death 

us in clear-cut outline more plainly than we 
find it in most other writings. I do it because, 
not only has Dante given us the figure of the 
external universe as it was believed in by the 
scholars of his time, but he has summed up 
the philosophy, the theology, all the wisdom 
of the Middle Ages, — in this, his marvellous 
poem, — as you can find them nowhere else. I 
take him, then, as a type, and for the purposes 
of illustration. 

The theory of the universe held at that time, 
and thus outlined by Dante, was, as you well 
know, what has been called the Ptolemaic 
theory, that one which has been displaced dur- 
ing the last four hundred years by the Coper- 
nican. That you may locate the time a little 
more definitely, I will remind you of the fact 
that Dante was born sometime during the 
year 1265, and that he died in the early part 
of the fourteenth century. 

The earth was a sphere, a globe, — at the 
centre of the universe. It was the centre of 
gravity of the universe, — the one spot, and the 
only spot, that was at rest. There was land 
on one of its hemispheres and water on the 
other. Now, around this earth were the dif- 
ferent crystal concentric spheres. We talk now 
of the spheres, of the music of the spheres ; 



Middle Ages 115 

but the old meaning has been completely dis- 
charged from those phrases, and it is hard for 
us, even imaginatively, to appreciate what was 
the belief of that time. 

You are to think of nine or ten concentric 
crystallised spheres, as real as a nest of glass 
globes, each inside the other. There was first 
the sphere of the Moon, as the body nearest 
to the earth. Then the sphere of Mercury, 
then of Venus. Then the Sun, regarded at 
that time as a planet. Then Mars, Jupiter, 
Saturn. These were the seven planets known ; 
and each of these was supposed to be attached 
to one of these crystal globes or spheres, and 
these turned around the earth, and carried the 
planets with them in their motions. It was in 
this way that the Ptolemaic astronomers ex- 
plained the movements of the heavenly bodies. 

Outside of these came next another sphere, 
in which were all the fixed stars in one plane. 
Beyond that was what was called the Primum 
Mobile, the first one of the spheres that moved. 
And beyond that was the Empyrean, unmoved, 
beyond space, beyond time, in eternity. 

Above the Empyrean were nine other cir- 
cles, or spheres, representing the angelic hier- 
archy. There were nine orders of angels. 
These were the Seraphim, the Cherubim, the 



n6 Life Beyond Death 

Throne, — three. Then were the Dominations, 
the Virtues, the Powers, — three others. Then 
the Principalities, Archangels, Angels. Three 
times three great circuits or rings, in which 
abode the angels, according to their rank and 
order. 

The Seraphim, in the smaller circle, were 
nearest the centre of life and power in the uni- 
verse where God was at the same time mani- 
fested and hidden in His ineffable glory. Then 
these spheres radiated farther and farther from 
God, and came nearer and nearer to the world. 
Dante tells us that the angels and the spheres 
that made up the universe as it was believed 
in at his day were created at the same time. 
And the reason for it is this : the angels in 
their rank moved — receiving their power from 
God, and their motion and life from Him, in 
their order — and controlled the different 
spheres that made up the world. That is, 
the Seraphim moved the highest sphere, the 
outermost one, that of Saturn ; the Cherubim 
moved the next one within, that of Jupiter ; 
and so on in their order clear down. And 
Dante tells us that they must have been cre- 
ated at the same time ; because, if the worlds 
had been made without the angels, there 
would have been nothing to move the worlds ; 



Middle Ages 117 

and, if the angels had been created without 
the spheres of the worlds, there would have 
been nothing for them to do ; so their creation 
was coincident in time. 

Here, then, is an outline of the kind of uni- 
verse that people supposed they lived in dur- 
ing the Middle Ages. But now we come to a 
tremendous change. 

As you see, there were just these spheres of 
the different planets, and these rings or circles 
in which dwelt the angels, with God at the 
centre. But what is the result when the an- 
gels are created, according to Dante ? It was 
just twenty seconds, as he informs us, after 
the angels were created, that Lucifer rebelled, 
leading a third part of the angels with him ; 
and they were cast out into the abyss. Only 
twenty seconds ; and his cause of the rebellion 
was different from that which Milton gives us 
at a later time. It was not ambition : accord- 
ing to Dante, it was impatience to know 
everything all at once, and because God did 
not confer upon Lucifer perfect knowledge 
soon enough, he rebelled against God's au- 
thority and was cast out. 

Now there came a great change in the earth, 
caused by the fall of the angels. When Satan, 
the great leader, fell, he struck the earth at a 



n8 Life Beyond Death 

point which later became the precise place 
where the temple in Jerusalem was located. 
The earth, in horror and fear, fled at his ap- 
proach ; and so, as he fell, it shrunk away from 
him, and created a tunnel reaching from the 
surface of the earth down to precisely the cen- 
tre, the centre of gravity. And here, because 
it was the centre of gravity, Satan stuck fast, 
and has been imprisoned there in eternal ice 
from that day to this. Satan, then, was poised 
just at the centre of gravity of the world ; and 
so much of the earth as had filled up this tun- 
nel and had fled at his approach, sunk through 
the planet, and emerged as an enormous moun- 
tain on the other side, the only land in all the 
western hemisphere. And at the summit of 
this mountain, which became the Mount of 
Purgatory, was located the earthly Paradise. 

When Adam and Eve were created, they 
were placed here in the Garden of Eden, on 
the summit of this mountain. But how long 
was it before they fell ? A little longer than 
the angels. The angels, as I told you, kept 
their first estate only twenty seconds. Adam 
and Eve maintained their innocence seven 
hours ; that was all. When I read the story 
in the Old Testament, and see that Adam was 
put to sleep and Eve created, and that he 



Middle Ages 119 

named all the animals and did a good many 
other remarkable things, it impresses me that 
that must have been a busy seven hours for 
him. But in seven hours he was cast out of 
the Garden of Eden. 

Dante does not explain it ; but it becomes a 
problem as to how, since the Garden of Eden 
was located on the top of a lofty mountain, in 
the midst of a hemisphere of water on the op- 
posite side of the globe, the human race is 
found to have its original home on the eastern 
hemisphere, in Asia. So one tradition has it 
that the human race lived there on what came 
to be the Purgatorial Mountain, until after the 
flood, and that, when the ark took Noah and 
his family away from this mountain, it floated 
around the world, and at last landed them on 
Mount Ararat, in Asia ; and so the original 
location of Paradise became lost to the world. 

This is the kind of world, then, that we find 
was believed in during the Middle Ages. 

Now, I wish to take you on a little tour with 
me. I shall make it as short as I may, and have 
it comprehensible to you. 

Dante goes to hell, climbs the Mount of Pur- 
gatory, and is admitted even into the angelic 
spheres and among the blessed who are enjoy- 
ing the Beatific Vision. In other words, he 



120 Life Beyond Death 

makes a pilgrimage throughout the known uni- 
verse of his time. And after his great poem 
was written it is said that the women and the 
children would point fearsome fingers at him 
as they saw him with his eternally sad face 
and bowed head going through the streets, 
and say, " There is a man whose beard was 
singed on his journey through hell," so real 
did this journey seem to the imaginations of 
the people of the time. 

This poem of Dante's is one of the half- 
dozen greatest poems of all the world. In it 
he sums up the philosophy, the theology, the 
science, — all the wisdom of his time. It is so 
interfused with Dante's magnificent qualities 
of soul, it is so touched by his feelings of pity 
for human sorrow, it is so dreadful in its pic- 
torial representation of the results of human 
sin, that it can never be forgotten or cease to 
be one of the treasures of the world. 

Let us accompany Dante briefly in his jour- 
ney through hell and up the Mount of Purga- 
tory. He finds himself, he says, lost in a thick 
wood. Three wild beasts meet him, — the al- 
legorical significance of these we need not 
trouble ourselves about now, — and he is about 
to turn back in fear when he sees Virgil, — 
Virgil who, in the popular imagination of the 



Middle Ages 121 






people in the Middle Ages, was made a 
magus, and a wonder-worker of every kind, 
whom Dante regards as perhaps the greatest 
poet of all antiquity, and had recognised as 
his master. Virgil tells him that Beatrice, 
the one whom he loved so passionately in 
his youth, who had died, and whom now he 
worshipped as an emblem and symbol of divine 
philosophy, had sent him to take him on this 
journey through the other world, that he 
might learn its lessons and teach them to his 
people. 

So, as they go on, they come at last to that 
gate which the world will never forget, over 
which is the inscription, " All hope abandon^ 
ye who enter here." Dante declares — and he 
tried to believe it — that it was written that 
both Love and Wisdom were engaged in 
building this prison ; but the part of the in- 
scription which no one ever overlooks is that 
which I have quoted. 

They find themselves in the first circle of 
hell, a sort of ante-hell, — an outermost circle, 
an entrance-way, a porch, — not hell as a place 
of torment yet. And here whom do they find, 
before they have really entered the place of 
excruciating anguish ? Dante finds that this is 
the abode of Virgil himself, his loved and re- 



■ 






122 Life Beyond Death 

vered master. And he finds here Socrates, 
finds here all the great, the noble, the good, 
the famous, of the ancient world, — not one of 
them with any chance of salvation. And yet 
Dante could not quite put them into a place 
of positive torment. They suffer simply with 
a deathless though hopeless longing, — longing 
for God, longing for light, longing for peace. 
And these are never to be attained. For 
Dante teaches us that, no matter how good, 
no matter how true, no matter how noble a 
man may have been, there is no possibility of 
salvation for him unless he foresaw Christ, and 
believed in him, or else looked back to Christ, 
and believed in him, and was baptised. 

Here also is an innumerable company of in- 
nocent, prattling babes that can never enter 
heaven. Why ? 

We are taught that before circumcision was 
heard of, if a parent had wonderful faith in 
God and did the best he could, his child might 
be saved. After circumcision was revealed to 
the Jews, no babe in all the world could possi- 
bly be saved unless it had been circumcised. 
And, after baptism had been given, no babe in 
all the world had any hope unless it had been 
baptised. So here, in the ante-hell, were all 
the good of the antique world and the millions 



Middle Ages 123 

on millions of babes with no hope for any of 
them in the theology of that time. 

Then the fearful descent begins. . I need 
not tell you — you know — how, in circle after 
circle, as they went down lower and lower, the 
quality of the sin is supposed to be increased, 
and the excess of the torment to be intensified. 
Tortures horrible, unspeakable, almost unread- 
able, fill the description of the mediaeval hell, 
until we come, as I said, to the bottom. There 
is Satan, so large, Dante says, that one of his 
arms was as much larger than a giant as a 
giant was larger than he. He has three faces ; 
and Judas Iscariot is being mangled in one of 
his mouths, and Brutus and Cassius each in 
one of the others. This peculiar punishment 
for Brutus and Cassius grows out of Dante's 
political philosophy. He had what he thought 
was a sufficient reason for placing them there. 

Then begins a new experience to this pil- 
grim in the other world. He starts, as he 
supposes, to climb down the thighs of Satan, 
but suddenly finds himself climbing up. He 
does not understand what it means until Vir- 
gil explains that he has passed the centre of 
gravity, and is ascending towards the other 
surface of the world. 

They find four rivers in hell, caused by the 



124 Life Beyond Death 

tears of anguish and suffering and sorrow and 
shame that have afflicted the world. They 
follow up the channel, worn by another river ; 
and this one flows, they find, from purgatory, 
and is caused by the tears of penitence of 
those that are ascending its mount. They 
come to the shores of the island from which 
this mountain rises, and there begin the ascent. 
Here there are seven circles, corresponding to 
the seven cardinal sins as taught by the 
Catholic Church. When they reach the Garden 
of Eden, or the Earthly Paradise on the sum- 
mit, Virgil suddenly disappears. He can go 
no farther ; and Beatrice, who has come down 
from her angelic circle, meets him, and be- 
comes his guide through the celestial spheres. 
In these spheres of the angels, the position 
which the saved souls occupy corresponds 
again to Dante's idea of divine justice. Those 
who had been most worthy, who deserved 
most, who were most distinguished for piety, 
are placed in the highest circles, and nearest 
to God. At the very centre — the light reflected 
in a wondrous lake — is the glory that hides 
the Triune God. Sometimes the blessed that 
are close to Him are permitted a glimpse of 
that ineffable radiance which would blind those 
who are not prepared for the vision. 



Middle Ages 125 

Here then is Dante's universe. It is on a 
pilgrimage like this that he travelled through 
hell, up the Mount of Purgatory, and into the 
heavens. 

Now, I wish to note certain characteristics 
of it which seem to me important that we 
should touch upon, and the lessons which 
we should learn therefrom. When Dante sees 
these souls in hell, they are embodied, after 
a fashion. They looked to him just as they 
did when he used to meet them on the streets 
of Florence. And yet they do not need to 
eat or drink : their bodies are not like the 
fleshly bodies that they had in this world ; but 
at the same time they are capable of suffering 
unspeakable anguish, — hunger, thirst, cold, 
heat, stinging winds. Only, remember, this 
hell is not quite complete, and heaven is not 
quite complete, until after the resurrection of 
the body and the final judgment, because a 
man is not supposed to be able to suffer every- 
thing of which he is capable until he is a whole 
man, body and soul together ; and he is not 
supposed to be capable of enjoying all that is 
best until he is a whole man after the same 
fashion. 

I want you to note here something that 
seems to me pathetic. I have studied all the 



126 Life Beyond Death 

old religions of the world ; but Christianity is 
distinguished from all others — and it is a 
lamentable distinction, — as being the first 
religion on the face of the earth that ever 
taught immortal, hopeless anguish. The 
other religions have their hells, — infinitely 
horrible, tortures such as we cannot conceive ; 
but they always think of time as made up of 
cycles, and those cycles come to an end. So 
all the hells end sometime, with the exception 
of the Christian hell. There is no other hell 
that I know of that does not come to an end. 

And this hell, as I said a moment ago, 
includes all the noblest of the heathen as well 
as the worst of them, and includes all the 
unbaptised children that have ever been born 
and have died. 

There is a characteristic now of purgatory 
that I wish to speak of ; and, to lead to it, 
let me say this : I presume my experience in 
trying to read Dante is very much like that 
of the experience of the average man. I have 
loved poetry from the time I was able to read 
at all. I read all the old English poets, — 
finding them in our own little town library, — 
read them over and over before I had the 
slightest idea as to their relative rank and 
importance. I say this merely to show that 



Middle Ages 127 

what I have to say now does not spring out of 
the fact that I have no love for poetry. I 
have always loved it almost more than any- 
thing else in literature. 

When I began to read Dante, I found his 
Hell interesting. It was terribly interesting ; 
but it was real, it was human. You had seen 
the people, you had heard them talk. I read 
Purgatory with a good deal less interest and 
with much more difficulty. It did not seem 
half so human to me : there was an air of 
artificiality about it. And I believe in purga- 
tory, not as a place, but as a condition of ex- 
perience both in this world and the next. But 
I believe that people are to work out their 
salvation, deliverance from their wickedness 
and their sins, through genuine practice of 
goodness in the helping of others, not in 
gymnastic exercises that have no unselfish 
purpose ; no purpose beyond themselves. 
Now, purgatory is simply a moral gymnasium 
in Dante. Those who are punished go through 
many tortures ; but that does not help any- 
body else, does not make the world any better, 
does not do any good except to provide so 
much torture for so many sins while in the 
world below ; so that purgatory always seemed 
to me unreal, unnatural. 



128 Life Beyond Death 

There is another defect about it. The 
Catholic Church, I have no doubt, meant 
well ; but, for example, if a man was saved at 
last, — that is, if he got a chance to go to purga- 
tory, which always meant a chance to get out 
of it and go to paradise and be among the 
saved, — if he postponed his repentance until 
the last day of his life, he would be delayed in 
the ante-purgatory which preceded the purga- 
tory proper for thirty years for every single 
year of his postponement in the matter of 
repentance. But the prayers of his friends 
and those who loved him could expedite that 
journey and shorten the time. So here you 
find all the prayers and the masses of the 
Catholic Church from the beginning for the 
deliverance of men from purgatory ; and it 
has been perhaps, the grandest of all the 
Catholic Church's sources of revenue. This is 
a serious criticism on the purgatory of the 
Church. 

As I said, I read the Inferno with intense 
interest. I read the Ptirgatorio with less in- 
terest ; and the Paradiso was the most unin- 
teresting of the three. None of the heavens 
that orthodox Christendom has offered to us 
has ever been interesting to me. In Dante's 
universe the only reason I can imagine for any- 



Middle Ages 1-29 

one's ever wanting to get to heaven is for the 
sake of getting out of the other place. There 
is nothing for him to do : there is nothing 
human for him to be engaged in. 

Now, let us review some of the other re- 
ligions, and see how much more natural they 
are in this respect. Go back to the traditional 
spirit world of the Indians. When the Indian 
got to his happy hunting grounds, he was 
happy. He had his dogs and horses, his bows 
and arrows, and was able to do something that 
he liked to do. Then take the Walhalla of 
the Norseman, — not, perhaps, a very elevating 
life, that of being engaged in mortal combat 
with one another ; but it was something to 
appeal to and thrill the rough bravery of the 
Norsemen. So take any of the other religions 
of the world with which I am acquainted, and 
there is something to go to heaven for, some- 
thing to do after you get there ; but the old 
heaven that I used to hear pictured as a boy, 
the heaven described as a place where man 
was to play on harps and listen to celestial 
music forever, was not an attractive place. I 
remember when I used to hear the hymn sung, 
one verse of which closed with 

" Where congregations ne'er break up, 

And sabbaths have no end : " — 
9 



i3° Life Beyond Death 

I used to think I would almost rather go any- 
where else than there. 

And so, when we come to Dante's heaven, 
the spirits discuss scholastic philosophy, fine 
points of theology ; and they gain now and 
then glimpses of what Dante tells us causes 
inexpressible bliss : the Beatific Vision. But 
it means nothing to us. I cannot understand 
what is meant by the Beatific Vision, or why 
it should cause exquisite delight ; therefore, 
Dante's heaven has no meaning, and so no 
attraction. To have any attraction for me, 
heaven must be a place of growth, of progress. 
One must be able there to find scope and room 
for the exercise of every grand and fine faculty 
of human nature. 

One question Dante asks there, and he re- 
ceives no answer. I have told you that Dante 
seemed to be troubled because the great and 
noble of the ancient world must stay forever 
in hell ; but it was church doctrine, and Dante 
was orthodox. He did not dare to contradict 
the teachings of his Church. He asks one of 
the old philosophers and wise men of the 
Church why it is. The only answer he gets 
is the one that Paul offers to the man who 
asks questions : " Who art thou that repliest 
against God?" He gets no explanation ; and 



Middle Ages 13 1 

Dante shows that he comes away with an 
aching heart, because he, the Florentine, was 
infinitely better than his God. 

This doctrine of everlasting punishment is 
blasphemy against God, is an outrage on every 
sentiment of justice, is a ghastly denial of the 
divine love ; and it has been the cause of more 
wars, of more hatred, of more bloodshed on 
this poor old earth of ours, than any other one 
thing conceivable. It has been because men 
have said, " If these people hold and cherish 
such ideas, they will go to hell, and they will 
take thousands and millions of other people to 
hell with them ; we must stop it at any cost." 
This has been the reason why thinking and 
daring have been accounted crime. The 
Bloody Mary of England reasoned logically 
when she said, " It is fit that I should burn 
these heretics here, whom my God is to burn 
in the other world forever and ever." Why 
should she be any better than her God ? And, 
if it were true, then the suppression of heresy 
at any cost was mercy. There has never been 
a rack nor a thumb-screw, there has never been 
an auto-da-fe, there has never been any one of 
the horrors of the Inquisition, there has never 
been murder like that of the Waldenses, never 
a fire at Smithfield, never a persecution from 



132 Life Beyond Death 

the date of the birth of the gentle Jesus until 
now, — now, when we are getting back the gen- 
tle Jesus again, — that has not been caused by 
this infernal doctrine of divine hate. 

Let us, then, be thankful for the changes of 
human thought that have given us a better 
heaven than that of Dante, and that have 
blotted out forever the hideousness of his 
hell. 



VII 

PROTESTANT BELIEF CONCERNING 
DEATH AND THE LIFE BEYOND 

TH E first verse from the twenty-first chapter 
of the Book of Revelation reads : " And 
I saw a new heaven and a new earth : for the 
first heaven and the first earth were passed 
away ; and there was no more sea." 

We do not know who may have been the 
author of this Book of Revelation. Tradition- 
ally, it has been assigned to John, the favourite 
among the apostles. The best scholarship of 
the age, however, is inclined to think that 
originally it was a Jewish treatise, antedating 
the birth of Christ, and that afterwards it was 
worked over by some Christian hand and 
brought into its present shape. This is the 
belief of the best scholarship of the age. I 
have made no such careful study of it myself 
as to be able — even if it were required — to tell 
you what parts of it are Jewish and what 
parts Christian. I wish simply to say that 

133 



134 Life Beyond Death 

the writer, whoever he may have been, marks 
in his statements a transition time between the 
old thought of the heavens and the earth and 
the new. He declares the first heaven and the 
first earth to have passed away, and says that 
he sees — doubtless in vision, looking up the 
future — new heavens and a new earth. In this 
new heaven and new earth there is to be no 
more sea. 

Let me say, in passing, that friendship and 
love for the sea are comparatively modern. 
In nearly all the classic literature of the world 
you find it referred to as a barren and des- 
olate waste. It was also looked on as a 
barrier between peoples, so standing in the way 
of human inter-knowledge and human brother- 
hood. 

The seer saw a time when the old heaven 
and the old earth would pass away and all 
things would become new. We are to consider 
a part at least of this transition epoch, and 
note to what a remarkable extent and in what 
ways the old heavens and the old earth are 
gone, and new heavens and a new earth have 
taken their places. 

Partly by way of comparison and partly for 
the sake of making this transition statement 
gentle and easy, it seems to me worth while to 



Protestant Belief 135 

consider for a little the universe of Milton, the 
other great epic poet who has made us so 
much at home in imaginative other worlds. 

Dante's theory of the universe was that of 
Ptolemy. I tell you substantially the same 
concerning Milton's ; and yet Milton modifies 
in some very important particulars the thought 
of Dante. Milton stands in a peculiar relation 
to the universe of Ptolemy and the new theory 
of Copernicus. Copernicus was born before 
Milton, and published his book long before 
Milton's birth. Milton was perfectly familiar 
with the new speculation of Copernicus. He 
had probably seen Galileo in Italy, the man 
who had done so much to establish the Coper- 
nican theory in the popular imagination. And 
yet at that time, the time of Milton, the whole 
Copernican universe was looked upon by the 
people very much as Darwinism is looked 
upon to-day. Scholars, those who understood 
Copernicus and were able to comprehend his 
reasonings and his proofs, had no doubt of its 
truth. 

So those to-day who have studied and who 
comprehend Darwin, and are able to estimate 
his reasonings and his proofs, have no ques- 
tion about the essential truth of Darwinism. 
But there are people to-day by the thousand 



136 Life Beyond Death 

who have not done Mr. Darwin the honour to 
comprehend him, and so do not accept his 
teaching. So there were thousands in the 
time of Milton who, not having done Coper- 
nicus the honour to comprehend him, did not 
accept his teaching. They still clung to the 
old Ptolemaic theory of the universe ; and 
Milton clings to it, at least so far as his poet- 
ical purpose is concerned. We are not sure, 
we have no way of knowing, whether Milton 
really accepted the theory of Copernicus or 
not. He does not tell us ; but he recognises 
it as a speculation in his verse. He makes 
Adam talk with one of the angels concerning 
this new theory. But it is very curious. The 
same old note that rings from the beginning 
all up the ages is struck : the angel advises 
Adam not to pry too curiously into these mat- 
ters ; to be modest and accept the teachings 
of the Church and look after the welfare of 
his soul, and leave these things to the consti- 
tuted authorities. This is the advice that has 
been given to man from the beginning ; and, 
thank God, it is the advice that man has never 
taken. 

Milton, then, accepted the Ptolemaic theory 
as the frame-work of his great epic ; and, in 
order that it may be compared with that of 



Protestant Belief 137 

Dante, let me outline a few of its main feat- 
ures. 

Of course, there was no purgatory in Milton's 
universe, because purgatory was a Catholic doc- 
trine which the Protestants rejected. There 
was only place for earth and heaven and hell. 
Imagine me drawing here, a large circle ; within 
that circle would be contained the entire Mil- 
tonic universe. Let me now draw a line across 
the centre, like an equator on a map of a 
hemisphere ; and all above that equatorial line 
would be the empyrean, or heaven, the abode 
of God and the angels, and afterwards of the 
saved. Below that was chaos. After the war 
in heaven, when the angels were cast out, they 
fell through this chaos ; and, to give you an 
idea of the size of Milton's universe, it took 
them just nine days and nights to fall from 
the empyrean to the bottom. They fell to the 
bottom of this circle ; after that, a dome was 
suddenly created, formed like the antarctic 
circle on a hemispherical map. Beneath this 
antarctic circle was hell. The remainder of 
the space beneath the empyrean was chaos. 

God then determined to create the world 
and man. And remember that, in those days, 
the word "world" was not identical with the 
word " earth." The world included all the 



138 Life Beyond Death 

physical universe, the planets and stars. God, 
then, created the world. And, in order to re- 
present the size of the world, imagine a small 
circle, the top of which would just touch the 
floor of the empyrean, and the bottom of 
which would reach half-way down to the ant- 
arctic circle, the top, or roof, of hell. Within 
this ring there were the nine concentric crystal- 
line spheres that you remember were described 
in Dante's universe, — the spheres of the Moon, 
Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, and so on. This 
was the Miltonic universe. 

At the very bottom of this great circle was hell, 
the prison-house of the lost, below what might 
be called, for clear description, the antarctic 
circle ; the earth and the planets, between this 
and the equator. And from the time of the 
resurrection of Christ, — the first one to enter 
heaven, — the saints went straight up to the 
empyrean, and the sinners went straight down 
to hell. 

I said that Milton lived and wrote his poem 
in this transition time ; and it was not lone 
after his poem was published before the whole 
Ptolemaic universe, as Dante and Milton both 
conceived it, passed away from the belief even 
of the common people, though certain ideas 
and phrases connected with that Ptolemaic 



Protestant Belief 139 

universe survive even to the present time. We 
familiarly say that the sun and moon rise and 
set, although we know that they do nothing of 
the kind. This merely to suggest to you that 
there are large numbers of phrases connected 
with the Ptolemaic universe that are in com- 
mon use to-day. We have changed the mean- 
ing. We understand that they are not to be 
taken literally ; and yet we continue to use 
them. 

It was a process of hundreds of years, the 
passing away of the Ptolemaic universe from 
the common beliefs and thoughts of men and 
the taking the place of it of the Copernican 
universe in which we know we are living to- 
day. These spheres dissolved, melted away 
into infinite space, into measureless ether. 
We learned that there was no up and no down 
in the universe except as related to the particu- 
lar planet on which the thinker or speaker 
might find himself at home. I remember 
when I was a little boy — and I refer to my 
own personal feelings and thoughts because 
they are probably paralleled by the thoughts 
and feelings of so many other people — that I 
used to look up to the planets and stars by 
night, and think, how glorious, how brilliant, 
it must be up there ! I had not waked up to 



140 Life Beyond Death 

the consciousness of the thought that I was 
even then as much " up there " as the dweller 
on any possible sun or planet. You remember 
that beautiful verse of Thomas Hood, — 

" I remember, I remember 

The fir-trees dark and high ; 
I used to think their slender tops 

Were close against the sky ; 
It was a childish ignorance, 

But now 'tis little joy 
To know I 'm farther off from heaven 

Than when I was a boy." 

But Hood might well be comforted. He 
was not any farther off from heaven ; and 
we are not any farther off from heaven ; even 
while on our commonly called dull, sin-cursed 
planet ; for the earth is a planet, glittering, 
shining in the eyes of the dwellers of any 
other of the heavenly bodies who may be near 
enough to see it. 

We are in a new universe, then. The old 
earth and the old heavens have passed away. 
And, with the change of this philosophical 
and scientific theory of things, the theological 
world found itself confronted with the problem 
as to where they should locate their hell and 
their heaven. We sometimes remember that 
the Catholic Church opposed science, that 



Protestant Belief 141 

it had the thumb-screw and the Inquisition 
for people who asked questions ; and it is 
perfectly true that the decay of the Latin 
races in Europe to-day has its root in religious 
persecution. For ages, for generations, every 
man who dared to think had his head taken 
off or was tortured to death in some less easy 
way. For many generations, thinking, having 
a new idea, was a crime. Under that kind of 
process how can you expect anything but 
national decay ? 

They were confronted, then, I say, with the 
problem of having somewhere to place their 
heaven and their hell. They opposed the new 
science — these Protestants — just as bitterly as 
did Rome. Old Protestant theologians charged 
Newton with atheism, when he discovered the 
law of gravity which accounted for the move- 
ments of the heavenly bodies. They said he 
was taking the stars and the planets out of 
the hands of God and putting them into the 
keeping of a law, and so he was atheistic. 
Ministers to-day ransack the Newtonian theo- 
ries for illustrations of the magnificence of the 
power of the Almighty. Down to the time of 
Kepler, who discovered the great laws of 
planetary motion, there was no one wise 
enough to advance a theory to account for 



142 Life Beyond Death 

the movements of the planets any more rational 
than that on each one of them dwelt an angel 
whose business it was to guide it through the 
sky, as Phaethon drove his chariot across the 
classic heavens. This was the attitude of 
Protestants as well as Catholics. 

Let us see now where they could locate 
their hell and their heaven. For a long time 
the discovery of the rotundity of the earth, and 
the fact that it moved around the sun, did not 
disturb these theorisers in the least. They 
still located hell within the earth ; and they 
found a vivid confirmation of the theory that 
the earth contained hell in the fact that, the 
deeper down they dug, the hotter it grew. 
And they regarded Vesuvius, -/Etna, and other 
mountains that belched forth smoke and flame 
as being vent-holes of the pit. One minister, 
an old theologian, more distinguished doubtless 
for his piety than for his sense of humour or his 
knowledge of physics, accounted for the re- 
volution of the earth on its axis by the belief 
that the centre of the earth was the place 
where the souls of the damned were impris- 
oned, and that it was their struggling to climb 
out of the pit that acted precisely as the 
struggles of a squirrel on the wheel of his 
cage acts, and so produced the rotation of the 



Protestant Belief 143 

earth on its axis. This is not very ancient ; 
and doubtless he had a good many devoted 
followers, even as Brother Jasper, of Rich- 
mond, Virginia, has had in our day, who de- 
clares, in spite of all the astronomers have to 
say, that "the sun do move." Any man who 
vigorously asserts any of these ideas is sure to 
have a certain kind and class of followers. 

After a time, belief in the earth as the abode 
of the damned was given up ; and some darker 
planet, supposed to exist somewhere in space, 
nobody knows where now, — they do not at- 
tempt to locate it any longer, — was chosen, 
where the souls of those who are in torment 
abide. 

They found as much difficulty in locating 
heaven as they did in locating hell. No longer 
could they say it was just above the dome of 
blue, for there is no dome of blue except as an 
optical effect ; and, as I said, in the present 
universe there is no up and no down except as 
related to the centre and the circumference of 
the earth. That which is up at noon is down 
at midnight, and vice versa. So they could 
no longer look up, except morally, to the 
place where God and the angels and the saved 
were to be found. There has been a great 
deal of ingenious speculation on this question. 



H4 Life Beyond Death 

Some theologians have supposed that the 
surface of our glorious sun was the place of 
abode of the blessed. Physically, I grant you, 
so far as we know, it may be possible. Others 
have looked for the central star in our galaxy, 
which is the Milky Way. Others have sought 
still farther for some sun central to the entire 
physical universe and around which all things 
revolve. They have thought that that, and 
that only, was the appropriate place for the 
throne of the Almighty. 

But we are faced by many practically insu- 
perable difficulties in these theories the moment 
we begin to reason. It has been told how 
many years it would take a train of cars, if a 
track could be laid, to travel from the sun to 
the earth. If it had started in the time of 
Shakespeare, it would still have a great many 
years to travel before it reached here. Even 
if the soul could travel with the speed of light, 
it would take eight minutes and a half to get 
to the sun ; it would take three years and a 
half to get to our nearest neighbour beyond the 
solar system ; and there are suns so far away 
that we know it takes twenty, thirty thousand 
years for light to travel across the intervening 
space. So, if we should accept any of these 
central suns that have been imagined as heaven, 



Protestant Belief 145 

it would take the soul so long to get there, even 
if it travelled as fast as light, that the friends 
who started at the time of Adam would hardly 
now have gotten under way. In that case we 
should not be able to speak, if we accept Mr. 
Talmage's theories on that subject, of having 
any friends at all in heaven ; we might say 
that we have some who have started on the 
journey, that is all. 

You see, then, the difficulty that confronts 
one when he attempts to locate either hell or 
heaven in the astronomical universe that is 
known to us at the present time. There are 
other theories which seem to me more rational. 
I shall have occasion to deal with them later, 
and so do not dwell on them now, — for in- 
stance, that the souls of those who have in- 
habited this earth do not leave the vicinity of 
our earth at all, except as they wish to travel, 
but that the spirit world, good and bad, wraps 
round this old planet like an atmosphere. I 
shall speak of this further. 

Now I wish to raise another question, as to 
who are the inhabitants of these hells and 
heavens, according to the teachings of Protest- 
ant theology. The old Catholic father, Tertul- 
lian, in a letter to his theological foes, pictures 
himself looking down upon the damned, they 



146 Life Beyond Death 

presumably among them, and cries out, " How 
I shall exult, how I shall laugh, when my time 
comes, and you are there ! " Thoughts even 
more horrible than these you may find in Pro- 
testant writers. 

Who are they that are to dwell in hell, and 
how long are they to be there ? First, all the 
heathen. There is no great Protestant creed 
in Christendom that finds any place for the 
salvation of the heathen any more than does 
the Catholic creed, — not one. All the count- 
less millions of them are doomed forever. And 
to let you have one little side glimpse, so that 
you may not think this antique, and that I am 
talking about ideas that are no longer held, 
let me give you a modern illustration. When 
I was living in Boston — about four years ago 
— there was a young man connected with one 
of the Congregational churches who wished 
to go as a missionary to Japan. He was ex- 
amined as to his belief. He did not announce 
this as a positive opinion, it was simply a ques- 
tion with him, — he wanted to be permitted to 
think that perhaps, if a man had no possible 
chance in this world to hear about or accept 
Christ, he might have one chance at least to 
hear about him and accept him after death. 
He promised that he would not preach such a 



Protestant Belief 147 

heresy as that. As an honest man, he simply 
confessed that the question was lying in his 
mind, and generating there a doubt as to 
whether or no he might be permitted thus to 
believe. And the board of commissioners, 
who had in charge the matter of deciding as 
to whether men should be permitted to go and 
preach to the heathen, would not appoint him ; 
he could not go. 

That is modern enough ; and the heresy 
would seem to be mild enough. None of the 
heathen, then, to be saved ! And oh, how 
many times as a boy, when once a month our 
weekly prayer-meeting was turned into what 
was called a " missionary concert," have I heard 
people urged and urged with heart-break and 
tears to give money to send missionaries, be- 
cause countless millions of heathens were drop- 
ping ceaselessly into hell ! 

Who else ? In the Episcopal Church, un- 
baptised infants ; in the Presbyterian Church, 
non-elect infants ; in the old-time New England 
Puritan Churches, non-elect infants. These 
are in hell, as well as all the infants of all the 
heathen peoples of the world that have been 
born in all time. Do you think this is ancient ? 
It was preached in early New England. Let 
me suggest a picture. It seems brutal to 



148 Life Beyond Death 

even mention it, because it is so horrible ; 
but people ought to know that these things 
are still in the creeds. An old sermon pic- 
tures God as holding an infant over a burning 
pit until the flames scorch him, and that in- 
fant's turning at last like a viper and spitting 
its venom in His face. It is perfectly logical, 
if every child is born in sin and depraved ; the 
difference between an infant and an adult 
being only the difference between a young 
rattlesnake and one fully developed, with all 
the venom, that is all. 

These, then, the great majority that have 
ever been born, are to be in hell ; and, if I 
should dare to picture the kinds of suffering 
that have been described by ministers in their 
sermons, you would turn away with your hearts 
aching and your heads bewildered with the 
horror of it all. 

It is to be for how long ? Forever, forever ! 
I remember, in trying to hint how long eternity 
would be, hearing this supposition : Suppose a 
bird were permitted to visit this planet from 
some other planet once in a thousand years, 
and carry off one grain of sand. At the end 
of a thousand years coming and getting an- 
other grain. When it had carried off the 
whole planet, eternity would not even have 



Protestant Belief 149 

begun. This is Protestant teaching still. I 
bid you recall that there is not an authorised 
creed in Christendom that does not teach it 
now. There are people, young women, young 
men, who would not look on voluntarily and 
see a bug impaled by a naturalist and pinned 
in his museum, who will join, and support 
with all their influence and their money, 
churches that are teaching these infamies 
against God, because they happen to like the 
embroidery of an altar cloth, or the music of 
the choir, or the attitude of the priest when 
he swings his censer. 

What does it mean ? It means either that 
these people have no hearts or no brains or 
else that they do not use either of them ; and 
whoever will may take his choice. 

Do you know, by way of contrast, who 
is to go to heaven ? A few people admitted 
because they were invincibly ignorant, — this 
is granted by some of the churches. A few 
churches admit some of the noble heathen 
who did the best they knew in the dark of 
nature. Some are coming to admit all infants, 
though it is illogical and inconsistent with 
their creed that they should. As a general 
thing, it is the elect, or the baptised, or those 
who partake of the sacraments and are true to 



150 Life Beyond Death 

the external forms of the Church. These are 
the ones who are to go to heaven. I will not 
dwell on that. I wish to come to another 
point. 

What are they to do in these places ? In 
hell, nothing but suffer. It is utterly purpose- 
less, — no growth, no progress, no possibility 
of outcome except to surfer more and more 
forever. Hell exists to illustrate the supposed 
justice of God. And the people who go there, 
according to most of the creeds, are the ones 
who have been elected to go there (or to be 
passed by and let alone), not on account of 
their character or what they have done, but 
by the pure will of the Almighty. 

And what is to be done in heaven ? Nothing, 
according to the old creeds, except to listen to 
music and join in it, if you can. No progress 
there, no growth, no hint that the great astron- 
omers can pursue their magnificent science, no 
hint that an artist can either grave or paint, no 
hint that any of the grand men of the world can 
carry on their professions, — that the philo- 
sopher can study and generalise, that people 
can do anything human. 

Notice, for example, an illustration as to 
how all discussion of this sort is cut off. Mrs. 
Ward (Elizabeth Stuart Phelps) wrote her 



Protestant Belief 151 

book Gates Ajar ; and if you are as old as I 
am, and noticed anything about it, you noticed 
the storm it roused. Why ? Because she 
dared to intimate that somebody had peeped 
through the gates ajar, and had seen that 
heaven was not so bad and stupid a place, after 
all. She said, for example, that the little girl 
who had hungered and had yearned all her life 
long for a piano might possibly have a piano. 
Everybody thought that was horrible. And 
yet, if you stop and think of it, a piano is not a 
bit more material than a harp, though it is a 
little more modern. But the Church has gen- 
erally been opposed to anything that is modern. 

Miss Phelps made heaven a human sort of 
place, where was a chance for the play of 
human faculties ; and since that day women 
like Gail Hamilton and other writers have 
dared to say their say. The old conception of 
heaven has been reformed in a hundred differ- 
ent directions. It is made more human, more 
natural ; and it is believed that there is play 
there for the grand human faculties which men 
really possess and the natural functions which 
they enjoy. 

The churches have always believed, — these 
old Protestant churches, — not that a person 
went immediately to the final heaven or the 



152 Life Beyond Death 

final hell. There are books written to prove, 
not only that the soul is detained for a time in 
an intermediate condition or state, but in an 
intermediate place as well. In other words, 
you will see that the foundation of it is in the 
doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Peo- 
ple have said that man is only half a man with- 
out his body. As his body has shared in his 
sins, so it deserves punishment as well as his 
soul ; his body has shared in his sacrifices and 
penances, so it ought to share in his rewards. 
So he cannot reach the final place of bliss or 
of torture until after the resurrection of the 
body and the general judgment. And almost 
every single one of the creeds of Christendom 
teaches still the resurrection of the body. 
They overlook a few objections which are so 
great as to make it an absolute impossibility. 
And this is not an old idea. During a little 
controversy that went on last year I had some 
correspondence with an Episcopal clergyman 
just over the river in a neighbouring city ; and 
he said that if there is a single Episcopal clergy- 
man that does not believe in the literal resur- 
rection of the body, he has no business to 
occupy his position. So this is not entirely 
an outgrown idea even among those whom we 
fancy are more or less liberal. 



Protestant Belief 153 

Mr. Talmage, I remember, in one of his 
grandiloquent rhetorical sermons, gives a vivid 
description of arms and legs and other parts 
of the body that have been cut off, sunk at 
sea, buried on battlefields, or lost in the wild- 
erness of the West, coming flying through 
the air seeking their mates on the day of the 
resurrection of the body. And innumerable 
ministers have taught that only after the resur- 
rection of the body and the joining of it with 
the soul can there be a complete and finished 
hell or a complete and finished heaven. 

If you raise the question as to whether that 
could be heaven where people know that 
father, mother, brothers, and sisters, or friends, 
are in hell, let me tell you that one of the com- 
monest teachings you will find from Jonathan 
Edwards, from Martin Luther, down, is that 
the sight of the tortures of the damned will 
only increase the felicity of the blessed in 
heaven. 

The Rev. Dr. Momerie, a popular preacher 
in the Established Church of England, preach- 
ing in London for a good many years, and 
with whom I am acquainted, says he heard a 
minister preach not long ago, who said, " Do 
you suppose that the sight of your friends and 
relatives in hell will interfere with your eternal 



154 Life Beyond Death 

felicity ? " And his answer was that it would 
not ; for the saved will be so in accord with 
the thought of the justice of the sinner's pun- 
ishment that they will even take delight in it. 
And Jonathan Edwards went so far as to say, 
that not only would we, on account of our 
belief in the justice of God, acquiesce in it, but 
he dared to suggest the infamous thought that 
happiness was always increased by the sight of 
an opposite condition. But Dr. Momerie said 
that, if these things were so, he would rather 
go to hell than be in a heaven the inhabitants 
of which were engaged in such hellish delights. 
These are the words of a member of the Church 
of England. 

My great objection to the hell of the Protest- 
ant churches is its infamy, its opposition, not 
only to the love of God, but its hideous injust- 
ice. My objection to the heaven is that there 
is no free play for any faculties which are so 
human that I could care nothing about it 
without them. There can be no growth, no 
progress, no new learning, no widening out of 
discovery in the conquest and taking posses- 
sion of the universe. I do not say that better 
thoughts are not coming to be preached. I 
do say, however, that the majority of Protest- 
ant preaching has been such as I have repre- 



Protestant Belief 155 

sented. And I do say that the creeds still 
stand unchanged, in which these ideas are em- 
bedded like fossils in the rocks. 

Let us thank God, then, that the old earth 
and the old heavens have passed away, and 
that a new earth and a new heavens are com- 
ing ; and let us look forward with grateful joy 
to their advent. 



VIII 

THE AGNOSTIC REACTION 

THERE have been in the world, at more 
than one stage of its history, classes of 
people who claimed that they knew almost 
everything. There have been also — and per- 
haps at the present time their number is larger 
than ever before — those who modestly claim 
that they know almost nothing ; who are proud, 
perhaps, of taking that humble position. It 
seems to me that Paul strikes grandly the 
great middle truth, when he declares that we 
know, but we know in part only, — when he 
refers to the fact that, as a child, he thought 
and felt and understood as a child, but, when 
he became a man, he put away a whole world of 
things that he supposed he knew, as a child, and 
contented himself with the humble statement 
that he was one of those who knew only in part. 
The characteristic of the childhood world is 
to be governed and swayed almost exclusively 
by feeling, to accept its beliefs through the 

156 



The Agnostic Reaction 157 

heart, by contagion of emotion, rather than as 
the result of conviction and through the head. 
The lowest people that you find to-day — the 
lowest in culture and civilisation — are the most 
certain of all the people in the world in regard 
to their beliefs, undisturbed by doubt, accept- 
ing that which has been taught them, or which 
they have got by a certain emotional contagion, 
without any sort of doubt or question. And 
the chances are that they will believe that 
those people who doubt in any degree are in 
a hopeless moral and spiritual condition ; that 
the reason for their doubt is a moral reason ; 
that, if they were better than they are, had 
been converted, had passed through a certain 
spiritual experience, they would see and know 
that to which now they are blind. This, I say, 
is a characteristic of early man, and of men 
living to-day in conditions similar to those 
which pervaded the early world. 

When we come to what has been called the 
Middle Ages, and what has also been called 
at the same time the Age of Faith, what do 
we find ? These ages may roughly be spoken 
of as covering the time from the fourth or fifth 
century on to the culmination of the Roman 
Catholic rule in the thirteenth or fourteenth 
century. What is the characteristic of the 



158 Life Beyond Death 

people of these ages ? They knew almost 
nothing at all about this world, but they knew 
everything about the other. This is the most 
pronounced general characteristic we can dis- 
cover of these epochs in the history of man. 

Let us note, for example, what they knew. 
They knew the nature and character of God 
and His condition before the universe came 
into existence. It has been told by some of 
them what He was doing, what He was think- 
ing, what He was planning ; and fragments of 
this kind of knowledge you will find in nearly 
all the early and well-established creeds. They 
knew that at a certain period in eternity God 
waked up and decided to create something. 
He created the angels, created heaven, — this 
first. They knew why He did it. They knew 
that, after a very brief period, there was a re- 
bellion among these angels, and that a certain 
part of them was cast out into the abyss ; and 
then suddenly hell came into existence as an 
abode for them. They knew that after that, 
God decided to create what we call the world, 
— the universe, as we see it, which was not in 
existence before, — and that He created man 
and placed him in a certain beautiful garden. 
They knew that man fell, and why he fell, and 
when he fell. Some of them carry this know- 



The Agnostic Reaction 159 

ledge to such a minute extent as to tell us the 
day of the week on which the work of the cre- 
ation was finished, or on which the fall took 
place. 

Then they thought, after the fall, that man 
was cast out of this beautiful garden, and 
started this epoch of labour, of disease, of 
moral evil, of suffering of every kind. They 
knew that there was an age-long battle going 
on between the unseen spirits of good on the 
one hand and the unseen spirits of evil on 
the other, and that the object and crown of 
this battle was the possession of the human 
soul ; that they were raging against each other, 
one that they might deface God's fair human 
creation, the other that they might protect, 
beautify and glorify it. 

They knew what was going on in heaven 
among the blessed, what was going on among 
the damned. They knew that both waited for 
the last day of judgment and the resurrection 
of the body, and that then everything was to be 
fixed in a final condition forever and ever. 
These things they knew all about. They did 
not, however, know enough about this earth 
that they were living on to know whether it 
was a flat plain, or a cube, or a sphere. They 
knew that nobody lived anywhere except on 



160 Life Beyond Death 

the top of it. Why ? Because of a certain 
old Hebrew book which spoke about men's 
living on " the face of the earth." And they 
knew also enough — or supposed they did — to 
know that it was impossible for men to walk 
with their feet up and their heads down. 
There could consequently be no people living 
on the other side of the earth. 

You see, then, that this was the condition of 
things during the Middle Ages. Men knew 
all about the other world. Strangely enough, 
they knew almost nothing about this. And 
how had they come into possession of this 
knowledge? Greece had been studying sci- 
ence, had been philosophising, had been making 
herself famous in art. Rome had developed 
a great literature, and established laws and an 
order of government which the world has been 
imitating ever since. But, suddenly, the pro- 
gress of Greece and Rome came to an end. No 
more Greek philosophy, no more Greek art, 
no more Greek science, no more Greek study- 
ing of the natural facts of the world. But for 
the happening of one thing there is no good 
reason to suppose that this development of 
Greek knowledge and Greek investigation, 
Greek science, Greek art, might not have kept 
on until now. 



The Agnostic Reaction 161 

What happened ? One thing on the part of 
the leaders of Christianity happened, and that 
one thing put a stop for fifteen hundred years 
to the intellectual advance of mankind. What 
was this one thing ? The early Church made 
the enormous mistake of accepting the idea 
that certain old books of law and history and 
poetry and legend and tradition, which had 
come into its hands from the Jews, constituted 
an infallible, divine revelation, that told the 
world all that the world needed to know, both 
about this earth and about the unseen. And 
its reverence for these books as infallible and 
inspired made it wicked to ask questions or to 
study. So that for a thousand or fifteen hun- 
dred years the intellectual advance of the world, 
in regard to this intellectual outside knowledge, 
practically came to an end. 

I do not mean that intellectual culture, think- 
ing, developing the subtlety of the human brain, 
the power to think, came to an end. By no 
manner of means. I believe that in what we 
to-day call, in comparison, the Dark Ages, the 
candle of the human intelligence was still kept 
burning. Only, do you not see, its investiga- 
tions were confined within certain narrow dog- 
matic limits ? An artist was at liberty to paint ; 
but the only patron he could find to buy or use 



1 62 Life Beyond Death 

the results of his genius was the Church, and 
he must paint traditional Church scenes and 
ideas. He might philosophise as much as he 
pleased, — on the wings of speculation fly to 
the uttermost limits of his power to think at 
all ; but, note you, when he got through with 
his flight, he perforce, at the peril of his life, 
must come back and settle down within the 
limits of ecclesiastical dogma. He might study 
science, investigate the nature of the earth, the 
nature and history of man. He might study 
astronomy, study any region of the universe 
that was accessible to him ; but, if he wished 
to live and keep on in his scientific investiga- 
tions, again he must come back and settle 
down quietly within the limits of ecclesiastical 
dogma. He might think what he pleased. If 
he wished to live, he must not write, publish, 
or speak anything not endorsed by the eccles- 
iastical domination that ruled the world. 

This was the condition of things. Do you 
wonder that they were dark ages, that it took 
man a long time to be willing to be burned, 
or lose his head, or be imprisoned for life for 
speaking one of his thoughts, for daring to 
communicate to somebody else his innermost 
ideas ? A man dared not speak to his most 
intimate friend ; for this friend might be under 



The Agnostic Reaction 163 

bonds to the Inquisition, and be obliged, as he 
believed, on peril of his immortal soul, to re- 
veal what was whispered to him in the privacy 
of intimate friendly conversation. This was 
the condition of the Church for centuries, the 
condition of the intellectual, artistic world. 

But by and by there came a change, — that 
change which, using the French word which 
first came to have this meaning, has been called 
the Renaissance. Following Matthew Arnold's 
example, who said that the word had become 
so thoroughly at home among us that it ought 
to be anglicised, we call it the Renascence : it 
was the rebirth of man. And what started it ? 
It was the discovery afresh of and the growth of 
a new interest in the classics,— the writings of 
Horace, of Virgil, of Homer, of Plato, of Aristo- 
tle, the great philosophers, scientists, thinkers, 
poets of Greece and Rome. Those who had be- 
come familiar with these great classics learned 
that the Greeks had been engaged in the study 
of nature, and that the kind of world they were 
beginning to discover was not the kind that 
had been outlined in the Hebrew Scriptures, 
which had limited their study. The artists 
waked up to the idea that this world was beau- 
tiful, and that it was not the kind of world de- 
scribed in these old writings. They began to 



1 64 Life Beyond Death 

notice that the human body, that of man or 
woman, was beautiful, — the most beautiful 
thing on earth, infinitely more beautiful than 
the grief-smitten, emaciated, haggard form of 
the Christ, as traditionally represented, or of 
the saints, which had formed the staple sub- 
ject of the artistic work of the preceding ages. 
Philosophers began to think, stimulated by 
Aristotle and Plato. They began to philo- 
sophise about the universe and about human 
history and about the Church, and found 
themselves face to face with imminent danger. 
They could not agree with the dogmas of the 
Church ; and they could not speak except on 
peril of their lives. Now and then was found 
a man like Galileo, who had not the stuff in 
him to wish to be martyred, and so would kneel 
in the presence of the priests and pronounce 
a recantation, whispering under his breath as 
he rose, however, his own belief that the world 
did move. Now and then you will find a man 
like Giordano Bruno, who was so impressed 
with the truth that took hold of him, that he 
must write, must speak, and yet who would 
flee from country to country, attempting to 
save his life, until at last, being trapped and 
being too honest to lie, would suffer himself to 
be burned at the stake. 



The Agnostic Reaction 165 

These were the characteristics of the period 
of the Renaissance. Men began to think, to 
study. It was a rediscovery of this world ; 
and it was a profound and growing doubt as 
to whether the Church knew so much as she 
claimed to know. Out of this experience, 
what have come to be called Modern Science 
and Agnosticism at last were born. What is 
the characteristic of modern science ? It is a 
demand for evidence before belief ; it is asking 
for proof ; it is saying what seems to most of 
us to-day mere common sense. Why should 
I place myself — body, heart, soul, brain — in the 
keeping of a claimant who either cannot or 
will not bring me any good credentials on 
which to base the claim to take possession 
of me? 

It seems to us to-day — it certainly seems to 
me — the very last reach of impudence, of im- 
pertinence. Why should I give my brain, 
body, heart, soul, into the keeping of an insti- 
tution — I care not how old — that cannot give 
me a reason for taking possession of me that 
appeals to the first instincts of intelligence or 
common sense ? Time enough that the scien- 
tific spirit and the scientific demand for at least 
a little bit of evidence should come into the 
world. 



1 66 Life Beyond Death 

The Church said, "You must take all these 
things on faith." And let me suggest to you 
here that I wish you would study carefully the 
meaning of the word "faith." There is not 
a more abused word on the face of the earth 
than the word " faith." That which the 
Church ordinarily calls faith is the sheerest 
credulity. Take the position of the old Fa- 
ther, Tertullian, whose sweet words I have 
quoted to you, about exulting and rejoicing 
on seeing his opponents by and by in the 
flames of hell. What did he say about 
belief ? Credo, quia impossibile est. ( " I 
believe, because it is impossible.") And he 
thought it a pious thing to say. The only 
thing that I know of to match the stupidity 
and insolence of a saying like that is the 
parody or parallel of it made by a little boy 
in Sunday-school, when somebody asked him 
what faith was. He said it was believing 
something that you knew was n't true. 

And the Church carried this matter so far 
as to make it a virtue, — note, I say it with 
perfect carefulness and weighing the responsi- 
bility of my words, — a virtue to lie. An 
English bishop within this present century has 
said that a man would better lie — i. e., deny his 
doubts and his real belief — than utter beliefs 



The Agnostic Reaction 167 

which would disturb the faith of the members 
of the Church. It may be a virtue to lie ; but, 
if it is, I am going to practise a vicious course. 
I cannot lie, though all the churches on the 
face of the earth tell me it is God's will that 
I should. I will appear before the throne at 
the last day, and say : " O God, even if what 
they told me was Thy command, I refused to 
lie ; and I appeal to Thee as to whether or no 
I was right." I will take my chance of eternal 
hell on that issue. 

What has been declared to be faith ? Ac- 
cepting any statement which the Church 
wanted you to hold without reasoning or 
against reasoning. Now that condemns Paul's 
definition. I will accept the well-known New 
Testament definition of faith, translating it a 
little more freely and in modern phrase. The 
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says 
that faith is the underlying substance of things 
hoped for, the persuasion of the reality of 
things not seen or not yet seen. That is in 
perfect accord with science. Darwin, Huxley, 
Herbert Spencer, all accepted Paul's definition 
of faith ; and they practised it, too, every week 
of their lives. I heard Huxley lecture in 
Chickering Hall, when he was here ; and he 
showed a splendid example of such faith. He 



1 68 Life Beyond Death 

traced the ancestry of the horse, and said that 
a certain number of the horse's ancestors had 
already been discovered, and that, if the next 
one ever was found, it would possess such and 
such characteristics, describing what sort of an 
animal it would be. He had hardly been in 
Europe six months before Professor Marsh of 
Yale discovered this animal's remains in Col- 
orado ; and they matched perfectly what Hux- 
ley said that they would. There was faith in 
the working of God in nature,— the faith that 
God would not deny Himself, that He worked 
according to certain laws and methods. 

Another illustration of faith : I may say I 
have faith in a man with whom I have been ac- 
quainted for twenty years. I do not believe he 
would lie or steal or commit a burglary. If 
he is accused of one of these, and I am asked 
if I think he is guilty, I say, No. Did I see 
it done? No. Did I know anything about 
it ? No ; but I know the man, and believe in 
him. That is faith ; but faith, you see, not 
made out of nothine. It is faith based on a 
long intimacy and experience, based on facts 
and speaking out of facts. But if a man is 
accused of committing a crime, — a stranger 
whom I never saw before, — and I should say I 
had faith in him and believed he was innocent, 



The Agnostic Reaction 169 

I should be talking nonsense. I should have 
no reason for having faith in him. 

So there is a certain class of facts that come 
under the name of religion to which faith ap- 
plies, and another large class to which faith 
has no relation whatsoever. Suppose I should 
say, I have faith that a certain man was born 
in Nazareth a certain number of years ago, 
and up to thirty years of age followed such a 
course of life ; that after that time he spoke 
certain things and did certain things, — suppose 
I should talk of faith in such facts. I should 
be talking nonsense. Why? Because the 
biography of any man, what he said and what 
he did, are matters of history, — matters for 
critical, scientific investigation. They are not 
matters to accept in the lump, — by opening 
your mouth and shutting your eyes, by " having 
faith." To do that is not faith ; it is sheer 
credulity. But there are great spiritual truths 
which are not dependent on history and criti- 
cism, that are such as come under the range of 
what is called faith. Some day I may treat the 
matter in a fuller and larger way. 

But the result of the coming into the world 
of the scientific spirit after the Renaissance, 
and the development of Agnosticism, was a 
very practical one. Before I go into detail 



170 Life Beyond Death 

as to what these results were, I must give you 
a definition of Agnosticism ; for it is a word 
that did not exist until Mr. Huxley invented 
it, although it has gone into all the diction- 
aries and become very common now. He 
belonged, at a certain period of his life, to a 
metaphysical club, or society, that represented 
all sorts of philosophical and religious beliefs. 
The members all had names except himself. 
One was called a Pantheist, another a Christian, 
another aTheist, another a Metaphysician ; but 
he was without a name. He said it made him 
feel something like the famous fox after he 
had left an important part of him in a trap : 
he did not look like the rest of his friends, 
and did not feel at home with them. Their 
various names ended with an "ist," or were 
connected with some sort of scheme called an 
" ism." And it occurred to him to take the 
name of " Agnostic," and feel at home with 
the rest. And the meaning of it was, " I do 
not know." In the early days of Christianity, 
men were sometimes called Gnostics, from the 
Greek gnosis, which means knowledge ; the 
Gnostics were the people who knew. This 
Gnostic philosophy was not a scientific philo- 
sophy at all. They did not know on the basis of 
any evidence. If you had been acquainted with 



The Agnostic Reaction 171 

them, you would have found that they had 
evolved from their inner consciousness the 
most of the knowledge they had ; but they 
felt that they knew, — knew the invisible, knew 
truth, knew spiritual realities. 

Mr. Huxley, in his humility, took the name 
" Agnostic," which means one who does not 
know ; for he said, while all those around him 
knew so much about all sorts of things, he 
could not say that he did. Why ? Because 
he kept the word " knowledge " for its real 
use. Let me say to you, with all the force 
and frankness that I can put into the phrase, 
You have no right to say that you know any- 
thing, unless, on the one hand, it is a funda- 
mental truth of consciousness, or unless you 
have proved it, and demonstrated by ade- 
quate evidence that it is true. When most 
people say " I know," they will be found if 
you catechise them a little, to believe a thing 
with a good deal of force. But a person has 
no right to say he knows, unless he does know. 
I have tried for years to keep the words 
"know" and "knowledge" for those things. 
There are a thousand things that I believe, 
that I do not know. There are a thousand 
things that I think, for which the evidence 
seems strong enough to be called probable ; 



172 Life Beyond Death 

there is more in its favour than there is in 
favour of the opposite proposition ; but I do 
not know these things, I simply believe them 
probable. I hold them tentatively ; and I wait 
for evidence. 

Now there is the essence of Agnosticism, 
as Huxley meant it. He said : " You tell me 
about a certain kind of God, — a kind of God 
who foreordained everything that was to hap- 
pen in this world, and who is going to damn 
people who do not believe in a particular 
Church. You say you know it. I don't 
know it. As to this I am an Agnostic." 
" They tell me this Bible is infallible from one 
end to the other," Huxley might say. " I do 
not know anything about it ; and I think I can 
prove the contrary. But if you will not ac- 
cept evidence, I cannot have anything further 
to do with you, because I cannot talk with a 
man who will not hear evidence." So as to this 
whole range of so-called spiritual things, the 
existence of purgatory and hell and the tradi- 
tional kind of heaven, Mr. Huxley said sim- 
ply, " I don't know." No true Agnostic ever 
says he knows a negative can be proved any 
more than can a positive. He may feel very 
strongly about it either way, like other men. 

There is a certain class of men who call 



The Agnostic Reaction 173 

themselves Agnostics to-day who do not re- 
present the true idea of Agnosticism at all. 
They may have different canons of proof, 
they may have personal bias and prejudice, so 
that you could not convince them with any 
amount of evidence that a certain thing is 
true, merely because they do not like it, and 
they do not want it to be true. Now that 
kind of a man is not an Agnostic at all accord- 
ing to the definition of the man who invented 
the term ; he is simply a bigot. For you 
need to remember in all these discussions that 
there are scientific and philosophic bigots, 
just as great bigots as the most bigoted theo- 
ologian that ever lived in the history of the 
world. I know men who, if you should offer 
them evidence in a certain direction, would, 
in a lordly fashion, with a wave of the hand, 
sweep it out of existence. They will not go 
two steps to see whether you have any evi- 
dence or not. That is bigotry. It is not 
Agnosticism, it is not science. So there may 
be Agnostic bigotry as well as Presbyterian 
bigotry or Baptist bigotry. 

The real Agnostic is a truth-seeker. I have 
never found one in my life who wanted to 
doubt anything that a man with a heart would 
not wish were untrue. I have had men say 



174 Life Beyond Death 

to me, with tears in their voices as well as 
in their eyes, that they would give their lives 
to know that there is another life after this. 
One of the noblest men living in this city 
to-day, as once we were sitting talking to- 
gether, and the long hand on the clock began 
to near the figure twelve, where the short 
hand already was, said to me : " Mr. Savage, 
if I could have as much evidence, personal to 
myself, of a continued life after death as you 
have had, for the price of it I would gladly 
die when that hand reaches twelve." 

I have never found any of these men who 
were sneering at the beautiful faiths of the 
Church, who were sneering at the real Jesus, 
who were sneering at God, who were sneer- 
ing at the hope of a future life. They simply 
reject, and are rejoiced that the evidence is 
not sufficient to compel them to accept, the 
things that are inherited from the hideous 
barbarism of man half-way out of the animal, 
— that is all. They do not want to believe 
in a horrible God ; and I do not. They do 
not want to believe in a horrible hell for 
good people, simply because they had not 
a little water put on their heads by a priest 
who was a hundred miles away when they 
were dying. They do not want to believe 



The Agnostic Reaction 175 

in a heaven where people are going to sit on 
clouds and sing hymns forever. They do not 
want to believe in any future pictured in the 
old creeds. 

I have been corresponding with one of the 
most famous of these men in the world ; and 
he is longing with heart-break for evidence 
that is satisfactory to him for a belief in the 
kind of God that I believe in. He is longing 
for a belief in something that will enable him 
to look death in the face without any fear. 
He is longing for the continuance of human 
love and human relations. He is longing for 
belief in everything that is dear and tender 
and true. Constituted as he is, and having 
studied as he has, the evidence that is com- 
monly offered, he says, is not enough to 
convince him. And so he has to say, re- 
luctantly : "Agnosco [I do not know]. I wish I 
did ; but, to tell the truth, I do not." 

And if there is any God in this universe 
who is going to damn him for saying he does 
not know, because that is the truth, I would 
not enter His heaven, if I had the chance 
offered me, to sit beside the highest ecclesiastic 
in the world who would be mean enough to 
condemn him. 

This is the reaction of Agnosticism that we 



176 Life Beyond Death 

are in the midst of to-day, and such the men 
who are more or less Agnostic ; and, if you 
only knew, you would find them in many of the 
pulpits of New York. If you only knew, you 
would find them sitting in front pews, and 
gladly paying the bills, because they think that 
possibly the Church is doing some good, at 
least morally and philanthropically, for hu- 
manity. If you only knew, you would find 
that the men to whom this word applies are 
often the noblest men, the most upright men, 
the farthest off from being liars, the most hon- 
est in their business, faithful and loving and 
true, and doubting because the evidence to 
them is not sufficient, and because they feel 
that they must be honest with themselves and 
tell the truth, or else, if there is another life, 
they would not be worth saving. 

These are the men who are labelled by those 
who guess at their opinions " Agnostics." If 
that is what Agnosticism means, I am an 
Agnostic myself, and want all the world, that 
cares, to know it. I do believe, however, that 
there are more certainties in the world than 
these doubters are aware of, and that as soon 
as they can be made manifest to them they 
will gratefully accept them ; and I believe that 
we are on the verge of discovering and 



The Agnostic Reaction 177 

making manifest the grandest beliefs of the 
ages, so that we can set them down with their 
evidence in the presence of these honest 
Agnostics, and have them thank us from the 
bottom of their hearts for enabling them to say 
at last, "I know." 



IX 

THE SPIRITUALISTIC REACTION 

IN the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle 
to the churches in Corinth, the fourteenth 
verse, it is written, "If Christ be not risen, 
then is our preaching vain, and your faith is 
also vain." 

Of course, from the point of view that Paul 
occupied, if Jesus had not come up from the 
underworld and been seen alive, then their 
faith, that Christians were to be delivered 
from death, was vain, and their preaching 
without any adequate foundation. As most 
of you doubtless know, the Easter hope and 
the Easter celebration, under some name, in 
some form, are thousands of years older than 
Christianity. But the significance of our 
Christian Easter lies in this one fact, to which 
I call your special attention. The whole mean- 
ing of it is here, — the belief that a man, what- 
ever else or more he may have been, after he 
had passed through the experience called death, 

178 



Significance of Spiritualism 1 79 

had been seen, had communicated with his 
friends, and so demonstrated that death was 
not the end of conscious existence. This is 
the significance of Easter ; and this precisely is 
the significance that is claimed for Spiritualism. 

The believers in this great faith tell us that 
they, too, have had communications from those 
who have passed through the experience called 
death ; that they have been seen ; that their 
voices have been heard. Mark you, for the 
present I am saying nothing whatever as to 
the truth of this claim. I wish to call your 
attention emphatically to the fact that the sig- 
nificance of the Easter claim and of the claim 
of Spiritualism are precisely the same ; and, if 
they are true, they demonstrate the same great 
truth and fill the human heart with the same 
great hope. 

A Spiritualist would very likely tell you that 
the advantage was on his side, because the evi- 
dence, whatever it may be, which is offered to 
us for the fact eighteen or nineteen hundred 
years ago, is old, — the witnesses cannot be 
cross-questioned ; it must be taken on faith : 
while the advocates of Spiritualism will tell 
you that their facts are present, happening 
almost every day in the year, accessible to 
anybody ; and they offer them to you only on 



180 Life Beyond Death 

the basis of the scientific claim that evidence 
can be shown. This is their claim ; and it is 
a claim that we shall find of great significance 
as we pass on to the development of our theme. 
I have been showing you in preceding chap- 
ters, how the almost universal belief in life 
beyond death has been held, and has grown, in 
all religions, among all people. I have shown 
you, especially, during the last two or three 
chapters, how this belief has come to over- 
shadow the world, so that the common lives 
of common men have been lives of other- 
worldliness, so to speak, — the present life has 
been diminished and belittled in the compari- 
son, until it has seemed of almost no moment. 
I have shown you how this over-belief, that 
offered very little in the way of scientific evi- 
dence, that offered no present or modern facts 
in its support, has been reacted against by the 
spirit of inquiry, of question, of modern sci- 
ence, until there is, at the present time, on the 
part of the more intelligent classes of the peo- 
ple, and those who have come to accept the 
method of science as the one and only method 
of knowledge, very serious doubt concerning 
these dear, precious things of the human heart 
that cannot, as yet, be demonstrated,— so far 
as the general opinion is concerned. 



Significance of Spiritualism 181 

I want you to note that we are to deal in 
this chapter with a reaction against a reaction. 
Though it has been proved to the satisfaction of 
those who have been dealing with the great 
material facts of the universe that the exist- 
ence of the soul and its continuance after death 
are incapable of proof, the great masses of 
the people — who love, and to whom human 
life is as nothing without love — have refused 
to accept the verdicts of science — have refused 
to believe that those men who have said, " I 
do not know," have probed the matter to the 
bottom. They have said : " We cannot give up 
the trust and the hope ; and athough we admit 
in a general way, and with regard to all other 
themes, the supremacy of the scientific method, 
yet we must believe here or we cannot live." 
And so, in spite of the methods and the claims 
of science, the great majority of the common 
people have clung to this hope, and believed 
that somehow and sometime it would be vindi- 
cated as a rational hope. 

It is interesting to notice the attitude of 
the poets as indicating this great common 
belief and trust. For instance, the first verse 
of this hymn by Whittier : 

" Oh, sometimes comes to soul and sense 
A feeling which is evidence 



1 82 Life Beyond Death 

That very near about us lies 
The realm of spirit mysteries." 

I have had the pleasure of talking this whole 
matter over with Mr. Whittier, and know that 
he believed the essence, the substance, of 
what is called Spiritualism, though he did not 
give much of his time to what is called investi- 
gation of the facts. But he cries out, you re- 
member, showing how close it was to his heart : 

" Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress-trees, 



Who hath not learned in hours of faith 
The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 

That life is ever Lord of death, 
And love can never lose its own." 

And, then, you are familiar with those sweet 
words by Longfellow : 

" There is no death ! What seems so is transition. 
This life of mortal breath 
Is but the suburb of the life Elysian, 
Whose portal we call death." 

I could quote to you passages from hundreds 
of poets, — from Sill, who has written so finely 
under the title of A Morning Thought, to 
Browning, who believed in immortality with 
his whole soul, so that he defied death, and 
said that he was not one to be afraid when 



Significance of Spiritualism 183 

death came ; he did not wish to be delivered 
from any of its pictured horrors, he did not 
shrink from feeling " the fog in his throat "/ he 
did not fear to face death in any form. And 
under the title of Apparent Failure, another 
poem, he asserts his great eternal hope for the 
poor wrecks of humanity, washed by the waves 
of crime to the horrible strand of the Paris 
morgue. Browning is not very orthodox in 
his faith ; but he believes in God and the 
human soul to such an extent that he thinks 
they never can be finally separated. 

And, then, there is Tennyson's lovely Cross- 
ing the Bar, closing with the words : 

" For though from out our bourne of Time and Place 
The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
When I have crossed the bar." 

Then there is a beautiful little poem by 
Aldrich, written after the death of his intimate 
friend, Bayard Taylor. I must 'give you just 
a line or two : 

" When the soft 
Spring gales are blowing over Cedarcroft, 
Whitening the hawthorn ; when the violets bloom 
Along the Brandywine, and overhead 
The sky is blue as Italy's, — he will come, 
Ay, he will come ! I cannot make him dead." 



1 84 Life Beyond Death 

And I would like to repeat to you two pass- 
ages from Walt Whitman. I will quote one 
brief one. I love to say this in all presences in 
his honor, since he was a man so misunderstood. 
I do not know of more than two other men in 
the history of this world who are like him in 
this respect, — and one of those is Jesus, and 
the other Socrates, — who so magnificently, so 
calmly, so conqueringly met death. I know of 
nothing in all literature to match the sweet, 
grand things which Whitman has written 
about death. This one you can place beside 
Tennyson's Crossing the Bar : 

" Joy, shipmate, joy ! 
(Pleased to my soul at death I cry,) 
Our life is closed, our life begins ; 
The long, long anchorage we leave, 
The ship is clear at last, she leaps ! 
She swiftly courses from the shore ; 

Joy ! shipmate, joy ! " 

That was Whitman's welcome to death. 
Note also the grand challenge of Holmes : 

" Is this the whole sad story of creation, 

Told by its breathing myriads o'er and o'er, — 
One glimpse of day, then black annihilation, 
A sunlit passage to a sunless shore ? 

" Give back our faith, ye mystery-solving lynxes, 
Robe us once more in heaven-aspiring creeds ! 



Significance of Spiritualism 185 

Better was dreaming Egypt with her sphinxes, 
The stony convent with its cross and beads." 

The poets, then, I say, who have, almost 
universally, — with exceptions like Omar Khay- 
yam, the author of the Rubdiydt, and Byron, 
— touched the human heart, have sung of hope 
and life, not of despair and death. And yet — 
and here is the meaning of the point I sug- 
gested a moment ago — these men, and all 
modern men, have felt the touch of this great 
question that has swept over modern life, that 
has challenged them to bring their proofs 
or else surrender their beliefs. And the one 
wonderful thing about Spiritualism, without 
any reference to its truth or its falsity, is what 
I called your attention to a moment ago, — 
it does not ask your blind belief. It says, 
" Come and see," and do not believe a word 
beyond what you can see or hear or feel of 
reality that carries with it this great conviction. 4 

Now let us look at a few of the characteris- 
tics of Spiritualism. It has filled libraries of 
discussion. What is called modern Spiritualism, 
as I suppose all of you know, began in Hydes- 
ville, a little town in New York State, in 1848. 
It had been preceded, however, in the modern 
world by other facts, which were given a similar 
interpretation. The family of the Wesleys, of 



1 86 Life Beyond Death 

which John and Charles were the most distin- 
guished members, was turned topsy-turvy by 
what were supposed to be visitations from the 
unseen world, though they were not accepted as 
from above, but rather taken to be devices of 
devils. Perhaps the most of you know that 
the home of old Dr. Phelps in Connecticut 
was haunted by similar happenings. Professor 
Phelps of Andover, the son of the old Doctor, 
held the belief firmly to the last hour of his 
life that they had a spiritual origin, though his 
orthodoxy prevented him from consenting to 
any but a demonic explanation of the visitations. 
Professor Phelps, as you know, was the father 
of Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, who has 
written so many books dealing with themes of 
this character. This preceded the outbreak at 
Hydesville. And what did this consist of ? Of 
rappings, of movement of physical objects, of 
all sorts of communications. I am taking now 
the theory of the believer, so as to save the 
trouble of circumlocution. It accounted for 
all sorts of happenings for which they could 
find no explanation but a spiritual one. Of 
course, the cry of fraud was raised, of devils' 
work ; but here and there were found some 
to accept the belief that these things were 
genuine communications from the other life. 



Significance of Spiritualism 187 

I wish to consider the attitude of the ordi- 
nary church towards this movement and 
similar ones. 

It has always seemed to me a little curious 
that the average minister will tell you that 
you are a very wicked person if you doubt 
immortality ; and he will tell you, with equal 
emphasis, that you are a very wicked person 
if you undertake to prove it. He wants you 
to accept it as an article of faith. And this 
for a moment must be a reminiscent time for 
me. I understand the attitude of these men, 
because I have lived through it. Long before 
I attempted to study the matter at all, I knew 
all about it. I preached against it. I de- 
molished the entire movement conclusively. 
I believed that it was false, foolish, wicked. 
I proved everything, just as a young minister 
is apt to do before he has studied matters. 
I demolished Theodore Parker in the same 
way before I had read one of his books. I 
have noticed generally that the thoroughness 
with which any one of these causes is demol- 
ished coincides with the ignorance of the 
demolisher. That has been the result of my 
research and experience. 

At any rate, the ministers opposed it. And 
yet it has always been a wonder to me that 



1 88 Life Beyond Death 

they should not have welcomed it. The 
Catholic Church has been wiser. It has 
admitted that there have been what are com- 
monly called "miracles" all the way down, 
accepts them to-day, and has said to the Pro- 
testants, — and the Protestants have had no 
answer : It is very strange that God should 
appear to teach and guide His people in one 
age of the world, and should leave them with- 
out any teaching or guidance ever after. 

I have wondered why ministers should not 
welcome demonstration, at least for the sake 
of those who without demonstration could not 
accept this central principle of Christianity. 
But I have wondered whether the truth might 
not be hinted at by certain experiences which 
I have had myself. I have had what purported 
to be hundreds of messages from the other 
side ; and I have never had a single one that 
was soundly orthodox. Wherever Spiritualism 
has gone, whatever else it may have done, it 
has liberalised the thought of the people who 
have accepted it, in regard to God's dealing 
with this world. 

But there is one thing no church can afford 
to overlook. There has never been a religion 
on the face of the earth that did not start with 
precisely the same kind of occurrences that the 



Significance of Spiritualism 189 

Spiritualists claim are taking place to-day, — 
never one. Christianity started with what? 
With appearances of people from the other 
side, with voices out of the unseen, with ap- 
paritions and strange happenings. Judaism 
was born out of the same kind of atmosphere 
and supposed occurrences. So was Buddhism, 
so was Mohammedanism, so has been every 
religion that I have been able to study in all 
my long life of research. All religions claim 
to have had at their beginning visions and 
voices, appearances, teachings, coming out of 
the unseen. Only it is immensely to the ad- 
vantage of Spiritualism, let me repeat again, 
that the occurrences are supposed to take 
place to-day; the witnesses are alive, can be 
cross-examined. You can find out whether 
they are honest men or dishonest men, whether 
or no they have been deluded or have really 
found out something of value. You can find 
out these facts to-day ; while concerning the 
basis of all the other religions you must simply 
take the questions at issue on faith, because 
they are no longer open to investigation. In 
regard to most of them there is not a single 
first-hand witness to any of these strange oc- 
currences. The only first-hand witness that 
we have to the seeing of Jesus after his death 



190 Life Beyond Death 

is Paul ; and Paul does not claim to have seen 
him in the body which was buried in the 
tomb. He saw him in a vision on the road to 
Damascus. 

Now I wish, finding myself continually 
misunderstood and misrepresented, to state one 
or two things concerning my own personal 
attitude. I read a paper some years ago at 
Saratoga before the National Conference on 
Immortality and Modern Thought. I was not 
a little interested and amused after the meeting 
to find that many of my good friends, who 
hated Spiritualism, had gone out saying, " Dr. 
Savage has lost his head, and gone over to 
the Spiritualists." And there were many 
Spiritualists there who went out of the meet- 
ing angry and disgusted because I was not a 
believer, or at any rate did not dare to say so. 
On one side they were angry because I had 
seemed to be for it, and on the other side be- 
cause my attitude seemed against it. My 
conclusion was that probably I had hit the 
middle path of truth and soberness. 

I have never called myself a Spiritualist. I 
have been charged with being a coward and 
time-server for not doing so. I believe that at 
the heart of Spiritualism there is a great truth, 
perhaps not yet clearly outlined, understood, or 



Significance of Spiritualism 191 

demonstrated ; but I have never been able to 
call myself a Spiritualist, because, as that word 
is used popularly in the newspapers, it would 
utterly misrepresent me. There are so many 
things connected with the movement that I 
not only do not believe, but with which I am 
disgusted beyond words, that I am not willing 
yet to wear the name. I hardly need say that 
it is not cowardice. If I have never proved 
anything else in the last thirty years, I think I 
have proved to those who are acquainted with 
me that I am not afraid to wear any label which 
belongs to me. 

Spiritualism as organised has been its own 
worst enemy. There have been a large class 
among Spiritualists who are so credulous that, 
no matter what sort of a story you tell them, 
they will simply ask for a bigger one. I have 
quoted in a preceding passage Tertullian, the 
old Church Father who said he believed " be- 
cause it was impossible." This comes very 
near the attitude of a great many Spiritualists 
I have met. They will believe anything, no 
matter what, that is told them, without investi- 
gating or asking for evidence. 

Another thing that has been against them — 
not with me, however, I take pride in saying — 
is that the movement started with the poor 



192 Life Beyond Death 

and the meek and lowly ones of earth ; but 
there is a striking parallelism right in there 
with early Christianity. You know people 
went around then, not asking whether or no 
Jesus was a real prophet or if what he said 
was true, but how many of the scribes or the 
Pharisees believed on him. Men commonly 
wait for a popular movement before they join. 
Spiritualism started in this same way ; and 
I have met a great many people who have 
confessed to me privately that they believed, 
but would not say so because it was not 
popular. One famous English scientific man 
told me in private conversation that he had 
been experimenting for years, and knew that 
Spiritualism was true ; but, he added, " I don't 
talk with people about it; because I used to 
call every man who had anything to do with it 
a fool, and I don't enjoy being called a fool." 
So he kept still. This is the attitude people 
have taken in regard to it ; and to-day you can 
never get at the number of Spiritualists by the 
census. I venture to believe that you can- 
not take a stand on any spot on Manhattan 
Island and throw a stone without there being 
somewhere within the radius of its fall one or 
more families who are studying Spiritualism 
privately in their own houses, and who are 



Significance of Spiritualism 193 

believers, but dare not let their next-door 
neighbours know it for fear of ridicule. I have 
had people, when I was travelling, sit down be- 
side me, and evidently feel their way. They 
would ask a question or make a statement just 
to try me, to see whether I was going to be 
unsympathetic. The moment they found I 
was sympathetic, they would tell me wonderful 
things within the range of their own experience. 
So the country is full of people who have had 
strange things happen to them, and who be- 
lieve, or at least wonder if there is not 
"something in it." 

One of the worst enemies of Spiritualism is 
the dishonest practitioner, the " fake medium," 
or the people who cover him up through any 
personal favour, or, as they mistakenly think 
for the honour of the cause and to save it 
from disgrace. If there is any man on the 
face of this earth meaner, more utterly con- 
temptible than any other man, it is he who 
will take money, coined from the broken 
hearts, from the hopeless tears of those who 
long to know whether or no their dead are 
alive ; and take it, not even for what they be- 
lieve to be a genuine message from the other 
side, but simply for the sake of the money. 

When a person will do that, I do not believe 
13 



194 Life Beyond Death 

there is anything on the face of the wide earth 
too mean for him to do. 

These are some of the obstacles that have 
stood in the way of the progress of the move- 
ment called Spiritualism. 

Now one word in its favour, so far as it goes. 
I have said that I do not call myself a Spiritual- 
ist. I shall announce to you frankly, later on, 
what I believe and where I stand. There are 
certain things that ought to be said in defence 
of Spiritualism. At one time all the newspapers 
in New York had long articles as to the belief of 
the Rev. Dr. Abbott, of Plymouth Church ; and 
they were coupled with an account concerning 
the belief of Dr. Hillis, his successor, both of 
whom believed, according to their own state- 
ment, all that is essential to Spiritualism, only 
they were both very careful and most anxious 
to guard themselves against the possible sus- 
picion of belief in such vulgar things as a rap 
on a table or a movement of a physical object. 
Frankly, I can never understand what there 
is so foolish or degrading in a rap. Suppose 
you were in one room of a hotel and I in 
another, and I should want to call on you. If 
I am courteous and half-polite, I do not open 
the door and rush in without finding out 
whether you want to see me or not. I tap on 



Significance of Spiritualism 195 

the door to announce myself. Suppose I have 
a friend in the Unseen, close by me, who wishes 
to communicate something to me, and finds he 
can call my attention by a tap. Is there any- 
thing so very silly about it ? If there is, I am 
too dull to discover it. 

And, then, as to this question of the move- 
ment of physical bodies. Did you ever think, 
— please stop and consider this, for it is the es- 
sence of the whole matter, — if there is a power 
in the universe that is capable of lifting a grain 
of wheat or a hair without the use of any mus- 
cular or physical effort, then he who has dis- 
covered this has crossed the Rubicon and has 
answered the question as to whether this uni- 
verse is material or spiritual. If a particle of 
matter can be moved without muscular contact 
or physical force, in the ordinary sense in which 
these words are used, then it is demonstrated 
to all the world that there is unseen spiritual 
power at work there ; and, if these movements 
indicate intelligence, then the power that moves 
is an intelligent power. 

And yet people talk about these things as 
though they had no significance at all. This 
is the shallowest way of dealing with the mat- 
ter. I have had it said to me a thousand times 
that whatever claims to come from the other 



196 Life Beyond Death 

side is always silly and foolish, nothing digni- 
fied, nothing worthy. That, again, shows that 
the person who makes the statement is not ac- 
quainted with the facts. I have had what pur- 
ported to be hundreds of messages come from 
the other side, and many have asked me what 
kind of messages they were. I have frequently 
replied that they were very much on the level 
of my daily mail. I get some very silly things 
every morning in my mail, some malicious 
things, some stupid things. I get some things 
tender and noble and sweet, some things full 
of intelligence. And, if we could once get 
our heads free from the nonsense inherited 
from the old and discarded ideas of the past, 
— such as the idea that the moment a man dies 
he is either a devil or an angel, — this is just 
what we should expect. If I should die on 
the platform of my church, and come to con- 
sciousness in five minutes, I should expect to 
be neither more foolish nor more wise than I 
am now. Why should I be ? And, if I should 
send you a message, why should it not be on 
the average of my present intelligence ? 

The very silliest thing on the face of the 
earth, it seems to me, that people do, is to go 
to mediums for advice, particularly in regard 
to financial matters. I am fairly "up" in arith- 



Significance of Spiritualism 197 

metic ; but I should hope no one of sense 
would come to me, if he could, after I was 
dead, about stocks on Wall Street. I do not 
know why I should be supposed to know so 
much about a thousand things because I am 
dead. Fools die every moment ; and I sup- 
pose they are as big fools five minutes after- 
wards as they were before. If I wanted advice 
in financial matters, I would rather have a 
word from Pierpont Morgan than from a con- 
gress of a thousand spirits, although I knew 
the message genuine. 

This by way of a hint that you can elaborate 
in a hundred directions, and see how silly it is 
to go to " business mediums," as they advertise 
themselves. 

To recur to this question of intelligence that 
purports to come from the other side, let me 
say this ; find out whether or no the people 
who make this claim know what they are 
talking about. There is much trash that 
purports to come as communicated from the 
other world. At the same time there is a 
whole library of the noblest moral and spirit- 
ual teaching that I am acquainted with. I 
know one book, for example, the author of 
which was an Oxford graduate, who during a 
large part of his life was connected with the 



198 Life Beyond Death 

School Board of the city of London, a member 
of the Church of England when he began, and 
afterwards a clergyman in that Church, who 
became a Spiritualist and a medium. His 
book was written automatically, as he tells us, 
through his own hand. Sometimes in order to 
divert his thoughts from what he was writing, 
he would sit and read Plato in the original 
Greek, while his hand was at work on its own 
account. And this book, contrary to what 
people ordinarily believe, went squarely against 
his own religious creeds, and converted him 
before he got through ; and it contains some 
of the noblest ethical and spiritual teachings to 
be found in any Bible in all the world. 

So do not trust the first squib that you 
come across in the newspapers in regard to 
the character of the communications or what 
happens on these occasions : just do a little 
inquiring on your own account. The news- 
papers are not always infallible in regard to all 
these matters. 

The ethics of Spiritualism, as published by 
its best representatives, are as high and fine 
as you can find connected with any religion on 
the face of the earth. This does not prove, its 
peculiar claims at all ; but it does prove that 
it is not a movement to be treated with utter 



Significance of Spiritualism 199 

scorn and contempt, or as being connected with 
the off-scouring of the earth. Early Christian- 
ity, you remember, if you will read over the 
writings of Paul, was made up of the people 
that the respectable did not have anything to 
do with. Spiritualism has until modern times 
been made up of much the same class of 
people. But now such names as Mrs. Eliza- 
beth Barrett Browning, Lloyd Garrison, and 
others by the score are associated with it ; 
and some of the noblest, most intelligent 
people with whose names you are familiar were 
open and avowed adherents of Spiritualism. 

Remember, then, that this is a great and, in 
the main, genuine, sincere movement, and 
that, whether its claims or any part of them 
shall ever be found true or not, it stands for 
the same great hope that makes the glory of 
Easter morning. 



X 



THE WORLD'S CONDITION AND NEEDS 
AS TO BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY 

I NOW propose to consider the present con- 
dition of thought, of belief, in regard to 
immortality, in so far as my experience, my 
correspondence, my years of acquaintance, have 
led me to think or know, and then to point out 
what seem to me some imperative needs for 
certainty, provided certainty can be attained. 
If there be no certainty, why, then, we must 
stumble on as best we may. 

In the first place, I wish to note that nobody 
questions that the evidence on which, as Christ- 
ians, we accept our faith in immortality is old, 
is far away, is waning in its power over the 
popular mind. One of my critics in a news- 
paper has said that to question the evidence 
for the resurrection, the reappearance of Jesus, 
would take away the reason for belief in the 
existence of all the famous Greeks and Rom- 
ans. It seemed to me that he was not par- 



Present Conditions 201 

ticularly wise in making such criticism. If my 
eternal salvation depended on my belief in the 
existence of Cicero or the accuracy of some 
reported saying of Socrates, then there would 
be a parallel between that criticism and the 
actual situation. It would become a burning 
question for all men earnestly to discuss as to 
whether or no Cicero did live, as to whether or 
no Socrates did speak certain words. But now 
suppose somebody should prove that Cicero 
was a myth, and his orations were delivered — as 
some one once humourously said — by another 
man of the same name, what difference does 
it make to us? Suppose nobody can get at 
the precise verbal accuracy of a single one 
of Plato's writings, except for the sake of our 
literary regret, who cares ? Nobody's soul, 
nobody's future, nobody's heaven or hell, de- 
pends on any of these questions. So that, 
when anybody suggests a parallel between the 
one case and the other, he is talking either 
without seriousness or without good sense. 

It becomes a matter of great importance to 
us to know whether or not we have good evi- 
dence coming down from eighteen hundred 
years ago that somebody who had been called 
dead had been seen alive. And yet, as I have 
said, we have only one first-hand witness to 



202 Life Beyond Death 

any such things' having ever occurred ; and 
that witness testifies that he never saw Christ 
in the body in his life, but saw him only in a 
vision on the road to Damascus. 

The testimony, then, is old ; the witnesses 
cannot be cross-questioned. We do not know 
who wrote Matthew, or who wrote Luke or 
Mark or John. We know nothing of the 
authorship of any New Testament book, — 
nothing certain, I mean, — with the exception 
of a few of the epistles ascribed to Paul. No 
wonder, then, as these facts of knowledge be- 
come common property among the people, 
that there grows a question, a doubt, as to 
some of these great things that have been 
taken on the testimony, the tradition, of the 
Church. 

You remember the old fable of the Hindus ; 
how the earth rested on an elephant, the ele- 
phant on a tortoise, the tortoise on something 
else, and so on down. As we go up the 
stream of human tradition, we find that one 
man says that somebody else said a certain 
thing, and somebody else said the same thing 
to him, and some one else to him, until at last 
we can find nobody at all who saw or heard 
anything at first hand. All scholars know 
this. What wonder, then, that doubt at last 



Present Conditions 203 

permeates the Church itself, and that Christ- 
ians begin to wish that they might come 
somewhat nearer knowing, — knowing that one 
thing which is nearer to the heart of the world's 
misery or happiness than anything else that 
can be conceived. The attitude of great masses 
in the Church is perhaps best set forth by 
these saddest, tenderest words that Lowell 
ever wrote : 

" Yes, faith is a goodly anchor ; 

When skies are sweet as a psalm, 
At the bows it lolls so stalwart, 

In bluff, broad-shouldered calm. 

" But after the shipwreck, tell me 

What help in its iron thews, 
Still true to the broken hawser, 

Deep down among seaweed and ooze ? 

" Then better one spar of Memory, 

One broken plank of the Past, 
That our human heart may cling to, 

Though hopeless of shore at last i 

" To the spirit its splendid conjectures, 

To the flesh its sweet despair, 
Its tears o'er the thin-worn locket, 

With its anguish of deathless hair. 

" Immortal ! I feel it and know it : 

Who doubts it of such as she ? 
But in that is the pang's very secret,— 

Immortal away from me." 



204 Life Beyond Death 

Is not this really the condition of thousands, 
in churches where they think they believe 
and have been taught that they believed from 
childhood ? I had a letter some time since 
from a woman down in Maine, whom I have 
never seen. She was a young woman, mar- 
ried four or five years ; and her husband 
was a physician. He was fond of fishing, 
and was one day drowned ; and she was left 
alone. She writes me a strange, sad letter. 
I shall not give it to you : it is too private, 
too sacred ; but it dripped with tears of utter 
despair. She had been a member of an or- 
thodox church all her life : she said she 
had supposed she believed ; but suddenly the 
hawser had broken, and she was afloat un- 
der skies with no sunshine. And, curiously 
enough, to show the drift of public opinion, 
she says : " I write to you because you are not 
of my Church. If I should go to my minister, 
he would feel obliged to tell me what the 
Church teaches. I write to you because I 
know you are tied to nothing but your opinion 
of what is true ; and you will tell me just what 
you think." And she pleaded with me to tell 
her if I really believed in God, if I really 
believed in any future life. 

This is a hint of what I have found in many 



Present Conditions 205 

sad cases. I find that people are taught that 
they believe ; and they believe that they be- 
lieve until the stress comes, and then every- 
thing is adrift. Not only the people in the 
pews. I am accused sometimes of accusing 
my brethren : I do not mean to. I know that 
the worst thing that I am doing is to talk 
a little " out of school. " Perhaps I ought not 
to do that. But let me give you one illustra- 
tion of the condition of things in the pulpit. 
There was a minister, who is not living now, 
whose name was a household word in almost 
every home in America, — a minister supposed 
to be in the main orthodox, at any rate as 
orthodox as Dr. Abbott. I preached once in 
the city in which he lived on a week-day even- 
ing, when he was free ; and he was in the 
audience. When we got through, he walked 
down the aisle with me, and said, " I agree 
with every single word that you have spoken 
to-night," and then added, with a touch of 
genuine pathos in his voice, " only I wish I 
felt as sure about the future as you seem to." 
Two or three days later I had a private talk 
with him in his own home ; and he, a Christian 
minister with a Christian following, with all 
the Christian traditions behind him, the Bible 
in his hands, said to me quietly and privately, 



206 Life Beyond Death 

" Mr. Savage, for the first time in my life you 
have given me at least some evidence of a future 
life." 

There is this great sweep of doubt over 
Christendom. The faith is an old tradition, 
weakening as the years go by ; and it is not 
strong enough to make people glad and brave 
in the face of death. Paul, as I have told you, 
could meet death with a shout of triumph. 
Who does it now ? Who says, It is bet- 
ter to die and be with Christ ? Do we not 
shroud our homes, our bodies, and our 
hearses in the blackest of dismal black, as 
showing how little we truly hope in life be- 
yond the grave ? 

I have told you already the position the Ag- 
nostics have come to assume. They do not 
want to disbelieve in God or a future life ; but 
they have come to believe that honesty com- 
pels them to say that they know what they do 
know and do not know what they do not know, 
— that is, to tell the truth, and they tell it with 
brave hearts, though their lips quiver, not be- 
cause they are in love with doubt. 

Then there is a certain sect — small, I think, 
as the civilised world is searched — of out-and- 
out materialistic atheists. Not merely doubt- 
ers, but men who think it is demonstrated that 



Present Conditions 207 

there is no soul or spirit, and that there is no 
God, and, therefore, no future. 

I corresponded a few years ago with one of 
the then most famous men, Dr. Maudsley, the 
author of a large number of powerful and 
weighty books, in which he deals with what he 
regards as science. In one of his letters he 
writes, a little humourously, though the humour 
was somewhat grim : 

" Why, Mr. Savage, as I look over the world and see, not 
the kind of people that we create as ideals, but people 
as they really are, all the way from bushmen and tramps 
clear up to the common kind of millionaire, I cannot 
make it seem worth while on the part of the universe to 
keep them." 

He said it seemed to him that it was the worst 
kind of economy to perpetuate such creatures 
through all the coming time. I had but one 
answer to give him. I suggested in my next 
letter that it seemed to me barely possible that 
some of the millionaires, as well as some of 
the tramps, might have germs of possibility 
within them that would some day come to 
something really worth while to keep. That 
is the foundation stone of evolution ; and I 
really think it is a more sensible position 
than the Doctor's, though he never confessed 
to me whether he agreed with me or not. 



208 Life Beyond Death 

Then there are thousands and thousands of 
men who are simply afloat, adrift. They do 
not know where they are nor what they believe. 
They have gained a smattering of modern sci- 
ence. They are suspicious of religious tradi- 
tion. And they are so many that, as Mr. 
Moody says, out of about seventy millions of 
inhabitants in this country there are no more 
than thirty millions who ever go to any kind 
of church. I am not at all sure that this is 
true. I hope it is not. I give it on Mr. 
Moody's authority only. But, if it is, half the 
people in the world no longer care enough 
about the great sacred traditions and issues of 
religion to ever step inside a church ; and it is 
a most terrible indictment against the Church, 
— more, I think, than against the people who 
stay away. 

If people get nothing in a church but super- 
annuated and dried-up dogma, absurdities, 
things that they would not call common sense 
five minutes after they had left the church 
door-way, why should they go to church ? Why 
should you take the trouble three times a day 
to gather from all over the town, wherever 
you may be, and sit around a table called a 
dinner-table, if there is nothing on it to eat or 
nothing for which you have any sort of relish ? 



Present Conditions 209 

It may be, then, the fault of the Church, if 
these statistics be true. 

But there are thousands of these men who 
do not talk about it. As one famous old min- 
ister said once, when a young, zealous enthu- 
siast tried to get him to talk, and, failing, burst 
out with, " Have you no religion at all ? " 
" None to speak of" was the reply. So there 
are thousands of people who do not unbosom 
themselves ; they do not stop the first man 
they meet on the street, and tell him that they 
really doubt whether they shall ever see the 
wife who died the week before or the child 
that was taken away in the night. These 
doubts exist ; but people are chary of speak- 
ing of them. Let me give you an illustration 
of the kind of talk that comes out when a man 
feels perfectly free. I have an old friend who 
lives in another city. I have known him for 
more than twenty years. We met in Paris. I 
had not seen him to speak with for some years. 
I knew he had a pew in an Episcopal church, 
that his wife was a devout believer and a con- 
stant attendant. I knew from past experience 
with him that his religious faith was not par- 
ticularly strong. He said to me : 

" Dr. Savage, here I am walking on a plank ; and it 
reaches out into the fog, and I have got to keep walking. 



210 Life Beyond Death 

I can see only ten feet ahead of me, possibly. I know 
that pretty soon I must walk over the end of that plank, 
— perhaps to-night, perhaps next year, perhaps in twenty 
years. I don't know when ; and, when I walk over it, I 
have n't the slightest idea into what, and I don't believe 
anybody else knows. And," he added, " I don't like it." 

If you could get at the secret heart of thou- 
sands of the noblest and best men of our mod- 
ern civilised time, you would find that they 
occupy a position very similar to this. 

Here is this great, wide-spread doubt, then, 
eating into the Church, teaching materialistic 
philosophy, threatening to darken the skies of 
the Agnostic, taking the heart and hope out of 
the noblest men and women ; while the great 
majority — if you press them with the question 
as to whether they know — will tell you, if they 
are frank, that they do not. 

Now, if this is a condition that cannot be 
helped, why, the best we can do is to be as well 
reconciled to it as possible, forget it as long 
as we can, and let the matter go. But I cannot 
understand the thought, or lack of thought, of 
the thousands of people who act as though it 
were not worth considering, or are not ready 
to turn their hands over to decide the question 
one way or the other. For, in my judgment, 
there is no other question on the face of the 



Present Conditions 211 

earth for one moment comparable to it in im- 
portance. As Professor Hyslop of Columbia 
once said, we put thousands of dollars into 
an expedition to dredge some deep sea or to 
explore the pole, to see if we can discover 
at last its ice-locked secret. We are spending 
thousands — we that have them — in all sorts 
of expeditions and explorations ; and yet these 
same men never stop to appreciate for one 
moment the reality that right here, within 
our own bosoms and brains, is an ice-locked 
pole and a Darkest Africa more inaccessible 
to most than any spot on the round globe, 
and about which the wisest men know almost 
nothing. 

Let us now consider for a moment. It seems 
to me that it is exceedingly important for us, if 
possible, to decide as to whether we are ani- 
mals, without souls, or are souls, wearing our 
animal bodies ; for, as I love to say a thousand 
times over, I do not believe for a minute that 
I have a soul. If I have, I might lose it, as 
the theologians say. I believe I am a soul, and 
have a body. 

But the great question to be decided first of 
all in this whole realm is to find out for a cer- 
tainty — not as a matter of belief, as I have 
just put it — whether or no it can be demon- 



212 Life Beyond Death 

strated that I am a soul. Can we prove yet 
that thought is not as much a product of the 
brain as bile is of the liver? That is what 
some of the materialistic philosophers ask ; and 
they say that we have not yet proved the con- 
trary. That is the point. Am I a soul ? If I 
am, then, at the least, I am a far different kind 
of being from what I should be if I were only 
a body, — a temporary machine for grinding 
out thoughts which are to cease when the 
machine gets tired. In other words, I can 
never know myself until I know whether I am 
a soul or not. There are certain numbers of 
men who, with the grand quality of Matthew 
Arnold, can say : 

" Is there no other life ? 
Pitch this one high." 

But the great majority of men are more 
likely to say with Paul, if we have no other 
life, " let us eat and drink ; for to-morrow 
we die." That is the common philosophy 
about it. 

I need to know, next, whether or no I am a 
soul, not only for the sake of finding out what 
sort of being I am, but in order to place in 
their relative positions of importance the great 
interests, ambitions, pursuits, of humanity. If 



Present Conditions 213 

I am an animal only, a thinking machine, the 
machine and the thought both destined to 
end after a little time, why, then it makes a 
great deal of difference in the value to me of 
political or social position, of money, of fame, 
of friends, of selfish indulgence in certain 
things I happen to care for. If I am a soul, 
then all the great mountain heights, the lofty 
peaks of the world, from my high position of 
observation are levelled out and down, the 
valleys are lifted up and the mountain peaks 
are made plain, as it was prophesied they 
would be to those who occupy this position. 

But if I am only a body, with a few bodily 
tastes for a few years, to satisfy, you may preach 
to me as much as you please ; but I am not 
going to live the same kind of life that I would 
find natural and reasonable if I were a soul. 
What is the use of self-sacrifice, of self-denial, 
for fifty or sixty years, when all that is to come 
of it in any case is for the whole to go under 
the sod and be forgotten, neither God nor man 
nor angels to remember or to care ? Will 
you tell me why on that philosophy of life I 
should sacrifice myself and suffer overmuch ? 
My happiness and comfort are at least as im- 
portant as those of anybody else. Why should 
one person on that theory sacrifice a moment's 



214 Life Beyond Death 

peace for the sake of a similar moment's peace 
for somebody else ? There is no outcome, no 
object, in it all ; for the peace of both sacrificed 
and sacrificer goes into dust, and that is the 
end. 

The decision of this question, when it comes, 
is going to make a great difference with our 
political theories and practices. In the Middle 
Ages there was a spiritual power that was able 
to lift the humble and to put down the high. In 
those days any poorest peasant might become 
the triple-crowned pope, at whose feet all 
spiritual authorities lower than he must bow 
in humility. You remember an illustration 
which I will use for my purpose, because it is 
familiar to you all, — how Cardinal Richelieu, 
the weak, trembling old man, drew an imagin- 
ary line about his niece Julia, and cried to the 
king and his courtiers : 

" Then wakes the power which in the age of iron 
Burst forth to curb the great and raise the low. 
Mark where she stands ! around her form I draw 
The awful circle of our solemn Church ! 
Set but a foot within that holy ground, 
And on thy head — yea, though it wore a crown — 
I launch the curse of Rome ! " 

And the king trembled in the presence of the 
paralytic old man, and fell on his knees in fear. 



Present Conditions 215 

There was a power then that could come to 
the defence of manhood and humble the 
mighty ; but we are in a democratic age now. 
Nobody cares very much for the pope except 
those who are nearest to him. I have heard 
good, devout Catholics in this country talk in 
this way. They say : ..It Js .all very well for the 
pope to manage spiritual affairs ; but, when he /^ "4^ 
dictates to me as to where I shall send my 
child to school or how I shall vote, then I am 
done with him. This indicates the coming of 
a new spirit into the Church. Old spiritual 
power then is waning ; and we need a power to 
take its place, if there be one possible, — a 
power that shall make men feel the awful 
responsibility of being men, and make them 
feel that not at some future time only, but day 
by day, they stand at the awful judgment-seat 
of the Almighty and Omniscient God, and that 
the universe is against them if they are against 
the right. We need a doctrine that shall teach 
men this in politics ; we need it in society. 

If we are not souls, but only bodies, those 
of us that happen to be rich and able to deck 
and array our bodies, and command the un- 
questioning obedience of the great masses of 
the people, are free. We have nothing in the 
future to fear. We will take the grandeur and 



216 Life Beyond Death 

the greatness of it as we go along; and we 
will use the rabble for our behoof. This has 
been the attitude of men so situated. But let 
the doctrine be not only taught, but believed 
by rich and poor ; let it be known to be God's 
truth, that each man is a son of God, each 
woman a daughter of God ; that the little time 
that we are spending here below is but a 
moment in our eternity ; that we are making 
ourselves by our characters, and that the 
eternal future hangs, hinges, and turns on 
character and truth and right, and not on 
power and frippery and the display of wealth, 
and do you not see the different kind of world 
that would be the result ? 

Then take it industrially. I have a friend 
who has spent years abroad studying the 
industrial conditions. Fortunately, he is 
financially situated so that he can go where he 
pleases and stay as long as he pleases, and 
meet the men in office, the men who labor and 
study, and converse with the authors of books 
on the subject, and become perfectly familiar 
with the situation. He said to me four or five 
years ago that he considered the settlement of 
this question as to whether we are souls or 
merely bodies as more important to the settle- 
ment of our industrial problems than any and 



Present Conditions 217 

all other considerations whatsoever. For he 
said : Go to Germany, study the masses of 
people in Europe, and they say : It used to be 
the nobility and the Church; they had it all their 
own way : they told us to be content in the 
position in which Providence has been pleased 
to place us ; postpone to another world our 
reward. Now, he says, it is not the nobility ; 
they are beginning to break down : it is the 
bourgeoisie and the Church, the comfortable 
middle classes and the Church ; and they still 
tell us that we must be humble and content in 
the place in which it has pleased Providence to. 
place us. But they say : We have studied 
science, we have read Huxley and Darwin and 
Herbert Spencer; and we do not believe any 
longer in your bugaboo God or Devil. We 
doubt whether there is any future life, and we 
do not propose any longer to be put off to the 
future for our share of the comforts of living. 
And when the great teeming and seething 
millions come to hold a creed like that, why, all 
the institutions of society, its sacredness, its 
cathedrals, its colleges, its universities, its 
nobility, its great men, will be only flotsam and 
jetsam on the tide of a flood such as never has 
been dreamed of before. •" 

For the sake of social order, of industrial 



218 Life Beyond Death 

satisfaction and peace, then, men need to be 
taught, — no lies, mind you ; they need to be 
taught that they are souls, and that how they 
live, what kind of lives they live, whether or 
no they cultivate mind and conscience and 
heart and become noble men and women, are 
things a great deal more important than the 
kind of houses they live in or the things that 
the Gentiles, in the words of Jesus, are accus- 
tomed to seek after. 

Then there is another class of people — I 
must speak of these briefly — that need to 
know. I can give you the point of view that 
I wish you to occupy better by telling you of a 
specific case that came under my pastoral care. 
A lovely, noble woman, not a member of 
my own society, came to me one day, and said : 

" I would like to tell you about my nephews, 
Mr. Savage ; I am at my wits' end. I do not 
know what to do. Here are my two nephews, 
whom I have loved since they were little boys ; 
and they are growing wild and unmanageable, 
throwing away their manhood, dissipating their 
characters, and I find I have no sort of influence 
over them. They said to me the other day : 
1 Why, Auntie, what is the use of talking ? We 
have read Darwin, we know a little something 
about evolution,' — this was their reading of it, 



Present Conditions 219 

with which I do not agree, as you know — ' we 
don't believe any more of that flimsy nonsense 
about a future life. You can't scare us any 
more by talking about the devil and hell and 
God's anger. We have gone beyond that. 
And we are rich, — we have all the money 
we want or expect ever to want. Now, we 
propose to do just as we please. We are 
going to indulge in all sorts of things that we 
desire ; and you know perfectly well that there 
is n't a family in the city that would n't be glad 
to have us marry into it, in spite of their know- 
ing all about what we do. Now, what is the 
use of talking?'" And she said, "How can 
I answer them ? " 

My reply was : There is but one answer. If I 
could look into the faces of those young men, 
and say, I know, and I can make you know by 
scientific demonstration that you are going to 
live ; that you have got to live whether you 
want to or not, and that as you cross the border 
line you take with you what you are, your own 
mean, selfish, warped, contemptible selves, — 
if you have made yourselves such, — and that 
there is not a moment's peace for you in all 
eternity until you come into harmony with the 
eternal peace of God, — if I could say that to 
them, it seems to me that we would have in our 



220 Life Beyond Death 

hands the mightiest ethical power of which 
the world ever dreamed. We could transform 
the world. 

Two other things I must hint in a word. 
Would it not be worth while to be certain, for 
the sake of the comfort and peace that it would 
bring to our hearts ? I know people who do 
not talk very freely about these things until 
they get very well acquainted with each other. 
But I have had people, after knowing them for 
years, break out, and say : We do not know 
anything about it ; and nobody does. It is a 
horribly unpleasant subject. Do not let us 
speak of it. I have tried to push it out of 
my sight and keep it out of my consciousness. 
I know that it must come ; but do not let us 
speak of it. That is the attitude of thousands 
of people — as Paul said, " Through fear of 
death all their lifetime subject to bondage." 

Now, if it were possible to prove that be- 
yond this life is another, that death is simply a 
gateway that lets us out into a larger and 
nobler existence, — if we could just know that, 
would not it be worth while for the sake of the 
comfort and happiness it would bring to the 
great majority of men ? I do not say it is 
possible yet to know it. If so, would it not 
be worth while? 



Present Conditions 221 

And, then, here is that father, — it seems 
almost cruel to speak of this, — compelled by 
business to be in another city overnight, re- 
turning in the morning to find three children 
and wife gone forever from his sight and touch, 
unless this hope of ours be true. All of us 
have friends, who have passed into the un- 
seen. It is no very great amount of comfort 
to me to think of them as having gone into 
utter nothingness, and that I am following 
them there ; for people talk foolishly about 
this kind of death as being a rest. How can 
that be rest of which nobody is or ever can 
be conscious? There is no rest about it. 
It is simply fooling ourselves with words, — 
abusing the dictionary. Would it not be 
worth the study of years to know, if it be 
possible, that we shall see our friends again 
and shall know them, and that we shall resume 
the companionships that have been dearer 
to us than life here ? Why, if this could be 
once known, the earth would never again be 
draped in black, the skies could never again 
weep with rain, every wind would be an anthem 
and every morning the dawn of an eternal day. 



XI 



PROBABILITIES WHICH FALL SHORT OF 
DEMONSTRATION 

IN the seventh verse of the third chapter of 
Titus appears the phrase : " The hope of 
eternal life." 

If you think I am somewhat negative as I 
start out, you will see that my entire purpose 
is positive and reconstructive as I get towards 
the end. Though this theme does not take us 
quite far enough, it does, I think, take us close 
to the borderland of that which is real and 
eternal. Oliver Wendell Holmes once said 
that, if any one wished not to come into con- 
tact with liberal thought in this modern world, 
if he did not wish to have any doubts of his 
old-time and traditional ideas, then he must 
keep away from the common atmosphere of 
the world ; he must let the newspapers, the 
magazines, the reviews alone ; he must stop 
reading and stop thinking ; he must shut him- 
self away from the common light of heaven ; 
for these things are in all the air. 

222 



Probabilities and Hopes 223 

If that could be said by Dr. Holmes con- 
cerning ordinary liberal ideas, much more can 
it be said concerning this great question of a 
future life. Blessed, say I, are they who are 
disturbed by no doubts, whose old-time tradi- 
tions, whose sweet memories of what mother 
taught, the echoes of the services in the old- 
time meeting-houses, are sufficient. Blessed, 
I say, are these ; for they escape a good deal 
of the torture, the suffering, that comes of 
doubt and question, which doubt and question, 
however, are absolutely forced upon those who 
think, in the world of to-day. There is no 
escaping them, they are in all the air ; and you 
can keep your childhood faith untouched only 
by keeping away from contact with people who 
think and ask questions. And yet it is possible 
that the self-culture wrought out by the doubt 
and study is worth while. 

The number of persons in the civilised world 
to-day who have more or less questioning about 
continued personal conscious existence after 
death, is unspeakably greater than it was a 
century ago, and beyond any dispute the 
number is increasing ; and it is increasing just 
in the most important part of this human life 
of ours. It is increasing among the thinkers, 
the readers, those who are becoming of such a 



224 Life Beyond Death 

state of mind that they must have proof be- 
fore they can quite accept any proposition. 

Some of the probabilities, the propositions 
that have heretofore been urged as arguments 
in favour of a future life, but which are not 
scientific demonstration, we are now to 
consider. 

When I was contemplating this special 
subject I wrote a very large number of letters, 
a good many to Unitarian ministers, a good 
many to ministers of other faiths, a good many 
to laymen ; and in these letters I asked two 
questions : First, Do you believe in a conscious 
personal existence after death ? Second, Why 
do you believe in it ? I wanted to find out, so 
far as possible, the basis on which this belief 
rests in the minds of some of the higher and 
better thinkers of the land. 

To my great astonishment, I found several 
ministers who were not at all certain of it in 
their own minds ; who had grave and serious 
doubts as to whether or no there was any con- 
scious personal existence for themselves or for 
anybody else after death. And beyond this 
what did I find ? I found only two, or possibly 
three, persons out of all those to whom I 
wrote, who gave me what, if I were a doubter 
and were seeking for scientific proof, would be 



Probabilities and Hopes 225 

one single particle of evidence. From only two 
or three did I get anything that I should count 
evidence in the scientific sense of the word. 
And I had to feel, as the pressure had been 
growing on me for years, that it was time some- 
body made a serious, careful study in this di- 
rection to see if there could be found anything 
solid enough on which to put a foot and find it 
hold. This is the secret of my interest in a 
year-long investigation in this direction. 

Now let us glance at a few of the arguments 
that you meet, or suggestions that you find, in 
books, in poems, in sermons, — everywhere ; 
and I grant you they are beautiful, and I grant 
you they are strong probabilities. They pile 
up, they accumulate, a hope of immortality. 
But let us see if we can prove it. 

Take, for example, the whole line of analo- 
gies that people are constantly following 
between the dying and the reviving of the 
vegetable life of the earth. Mrs. Whitney has 
sung very sweetly : 

" God does not send strange flowers every year : 

When the fresh winds blow o'er the pleasant places, 
The same fair flowers lift up the same fair faces, 
The violet is here." 

And there is a suggestion in that verse of 
the continuance of identity through the death 



226 Life Beyond Death 

of the violet and its reappearance in the coming 
spring. But the moment you examine it, you 
see it is only a beautiful illusion. The violet 
is here, but it is not at all the same violet that 
was here last year ; and in all the aeons of 
earth the same flower has never reappeared. 
It is no argument whatever, then, that my 
friend who was here last year is going to re- 
appear in his personal identity to me after the 
winter we call death. It is a suggestion, a 
beautiful suggestion ; but there is not the 
slightest particle of what science demands as 
proof anywhere about it. 

Take, again, these intuitions that are so 
strong in our hearts, the feelings we cherish. 
We say we know certain things intuitively ; and 
that feeling used to be a very strong one to me, 
until Herbert Spencer, and writers like him, 
came along, and took away the evidential value 
of these intuitions, by what was, at least, a 
very plausible scientific explanation of them. 
They said : " These intuitions are only the in- 
herited results of the thoughts and the feelings 
and the fears and the hopes of the human race 
through countless centuries of the past." I am 
not sure that Herbert Spencer is right. Un- 
fortunately, however, I am not sure that he is 
not right. Consequently, I cannot offer one of 



Probabilities and Hopes 227 

these intuitional feelings to a man who doubts 
continued existence and demands evidence of 
me. He says that is not evidence ; and I am 
obliged to confess that what he says is true. 

Then there are thousands of people — I have 
come in contact with a good many of them — 
who are satisfied with saying : I am conscious 
of immortal life. I am conscious that I am 
immortal ; I feel it, I know it. The magnifi- 
cent, brave hero, Theodore Parker, was one of 
the men who held that position. But, not 
abating a whit my admiration for Theodore 
Parker, I can but disagree with him at every 
point here. It seems to me that we cheat our- 
selves with a misuse of language. What 
Theodore Parker really meant, and what all 
people who speak in that way must mean in 
the ordinary use of the English language, is 
that they feel very sure, perhaps sure enough 
for them, as sure as they care to feel. They do 
not mean to be troubled either by doubt or 
evidence ; and they have a perfect right not to 
be, if that is their feeling. But I submit to 
you it is a misuse of language for a man to say 
that he is conscious to-day of a possible future 
fact. The question as to whether or no I am 
immortal is a question as to whether I am going 
to keep on living after the fact we call death or 



228 Life Beyond Death 

not. And, since that is a fact to be known, to be 
realised, to be conscious of only when it comes, 
— to-night or to-morrow or next year or after 
forty years, — it is simply impossible that a man 
should be conscious of it now. So again it 
seems to me that is not quite enough. 

There is another point, one side of which 
perhaps will be entirely new to you and may 
startle you at first. In most of the letters 
which I have received this last year, the great 
argument as it was put was simply like this : 
" I believe in God. Therefore, I believe in a 
conscious personal existence. I do not believe 
He has created me for nothing. I do not be- 
lieve He is going to throw away His own handi- 
work." That does not satisfy me. I do not 
believe there is a man on the face of the earth 
to-day who believes more thoroughly, from the 
crown of his head to the sole of his foot, in 
God than I do ; but my belief, my faith, my 
trust, is not proof, is not demonstration that 
God either needs me or is going to keep me 
after a hundred years. I do not know whether 
He wants me in a thousand years or not. yHow 
can I know? ^/ 

But now I am going to turn the thing right 
around. And here is a matter which, perhaps, 
will surprise you. If I were a confirmed 



Probabilities and Hopes 229 

atheist, if I believed that there was no God in 
the universe at all, I should still be just as 
earnestly and eagerly investigating the question 
of the immortal life. People seem to assume, 
the atheists all seem to assume, that, when 
they : ""have^ot-ridrof God, they have also got rid 
~oT the question as to whether or no there can 
be any future life. I cannot see for an instant 
why this force, this nature, this machine, this 
magnificent aggregation, whatever you choose 
to call it, — whether there is any God in it or not, 
— which has brought me here, has brought all 
of us here, and has put into our hearts all the 
love and into our brains all the thought and 
question, has given us consciences, has made us 
recognise questions of right and wrong, can- 
not keep me going forever. For, if a force, 
a universe with God left out, can do all 
that has been done, I do not see why it 
cannot also continue my existence through 
what is called death. I do not see any 
negative there that is in the slightest degree a 
necessity. 

So, as I said, I should still be studying the 
question of continued existence if I believed in 
no God at all. Belief in God does not seem 
to me proof of a future life ; neither does dis- 
belief in Him seem to me disproof of a future 



230 Life Beyond Death 

life. I want, at any rate, something beyond 
either of these. 

Then there is one of the grandest arguments 
that has ever been used, and one that touches 
us more deeply than almost anything else ; 
and that is the feeling on the part of noble 
souls that, as things appear to be so unrighteous 
and so unequal here, there must be a time and 
place somewhere when " accounts will be 
squared "; when the ignorant will have a chance 
to learn ; when the poor and despised will have 
an opportunity to develop perhaps the sweet and 
beautiful life that has had no opportunity here. 
This has been put forth as one of the strongest 
of all arguments in favour of the future life. 

I remember in one place Theodore Parker 
said that, when he looked upon the pinched, 
starved face and hungry eyes of a little boy in 
the slums, he wanted no stronger argument 
that somewhere in the universe that boy would 
have a chance. But, unfortunately for the 
scientific value of an argument like this, I have 
seen it turned right around. Books have 
been written in which it is turned right around. 
If God does not care anything about the little 
boy in the slums to-day, and does not see that 
he gets any chance or any justice, how do you 
happen to know that He cares for him at all or 



Probabilities and Hopes 231 

ever will care for him ? That is the way a 
great many people argue. They say : How 
do you happen to feel sure that the God who 
seems to neglect this world, and does not care 
anything about it, is suddenly going to be very 
careful and see that everyone gets his rights 
in some other world ? So you see that, at 
least, when a man flings that in your face, it is 
not always perfectly easy to answer him. 

I believe, myself, it is a tremendous probabil- 
ity in favour of the future life ; but, when a 
man comes to me, and says : I think it is a 
tremendous probability against the justice of 
God right here and now, I need to go further 
than reasserting my original opinion, before I 
can satisfy him or do away with his oppos- 
ition. 

Then there are lives that never seem to be 
treated justly here ; not only crime prosperous 
and rich, and spattering its mud on our poorer 
clothes as it sweeps along the avenue, — not 
only this, which has been a problem to every 
thoughtful man in all ages, — but there are lives 
which we know are never finished. They have 
infinite possibilities in them that have had no 
chance here to unfold ; and it does seem as 
though God would, God must, sometime, 
somewhere, give these people a chance. Let 



232 Life Beyond Death 

me quote to you just a few words from 
Victor Hugo : 

For half a century I have been writing my thoughts 
in prose, verse, history, philosophy, drama, romance, 
satire, ode, song. I have tried all ; but I feel I have not 
said the thousandth part of what is in me. When I go 
down to the grave, I can say, like so many others, " I 
have finished my day's work " ; but I cannot say I have 
finished my life. My day's work will begin again the 
next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley : it is a 
thoroughfare, it closes in the twilight to open with the 
dawn. 

But let me anticipate enough right here to 
say that this was not the prime reason for 
Hugo's belief. Hugo had been a searcher for 
years in the realm of psychic phenomena, and 
had come to feel that the matter for him had 
been demonstrated. This was known to all 
his friends, so that this — beautiful outburst as 
it is — is not the principal proof that Hugo 
would have given you in conversation. But it 
is a tremendous probability. 

Among the many beautiful letters that I have 
received during my experience is one from a 
widowed mother, who is practically left to a 
lonely life, and who writes : " I long so much 
to have this matter proved. It seems to me 
the one theme of any importance. My hus- 
band died ten years ago and my life stopped ten 



Probabilities and Hopes 233 

years ago. It seems to me as though there 
must be somewhere a time and place where this 
broken life can begin again." 

And so I suppose all of us say. You never 
yet saw an author who had written what he re- 
garded as the grandest thing he intended to 
write ; you never saw a painter or a sculptor 
who did not look upon all his attempts as sug- 
gestions merely of what he might do, if only 
he had the time and chance. Every person 
who ever wrote a book has dreamed a hundred 
more beautiful than ever he succeeded in get- 
ting on paper ; and, if the universe is just, if 
the universe cares, if it means something, it 
does seem as though there would be a chance 
for some of these things to be finished some- 
time, somewhere. 

I feel, as I look upon any man or woman 
with noble qualities of brain and heart, and 
see him or her nearing the line of the silence, 
as though I were looking upon a ship a hund- 
red miles from the sea. I feel as though he 
or she was not built for simply that ; it sug- 
gests to me an ocean sweeping round a planet, 
with the infinite winds in the sails and the in- 
finite stars overhead. So this to my mind is 
a tremendous probability. I look upon a child 
as I look upon a little plant in a hothouse. I 



234 Life Beyond Death 

know that, if this plant grows, it must be either 
taken out-of-doors or else it will burst through 
the roof ; it has in it potentialities greater than 
the hothouse which contains it for a time. So 
I feel concerning every human soul I come in 
contact with, — there must be some larger place 
than this, some grander place for these mag- 
nificent possibilities to come to blossom and 
fruitage. It is a tremendous probability in 
favour of another life ; but I do not quite know. 
I see a beautiful oak beginning to grow, 
reaching a height of ten feet. If it has a 
chance and time, it will grow to be a hundred ; 
and its branches will spread their shade for 
many yards in every direction. An accident 
comes : the little oak is knocked over and torn 
from its roots ; and I know that is the end 
of it. That oak is never again to have any 
chance to complete itself ; and when I grow 
humble, I find myself wondering why I cherish 
the conceit that a Power that can create souls 
by the million should feel under any special 
necessity of going back after I have been run 
over to pick me up and reinstate just me. 
While it is a magnificent probability, it is not 
demonstration ; and I want something more. 
I am not sure that in my lifetime I shall ever 
get what all will accept as demonstration. I 



Probabilities and Hopes 235 

want it ; and I cannot understand the state of 
mind and heart of anyone who does not want 
it. 

I come now to a point which seems to me 
a probability stronger than any I have touched 
upon. I have shown in the course of sermons 
which I have preached that there never has 
been a time on the face of the earth in any re- 
ligion when the majority of the people did not 
believe that they were going to live after the 
fact called death. The age-long and universal 
fact of this belief is the thing I would have 
you consider for a moment. If there is no 
reason in it, no basis for it, no realisation of 
such a promise, why should the universe from 
the very beginning lie to its child, man ? Why 
fool us with such a promise ? Why bend 
down over us with its beautiful sky and clouds 
and the whisper of the winds and the music of 
the brooks, and whisper to us ever, 

" There is no death. What seems so is transition " ? 

If it is not true, how does it happen that the 
universe in all ages should have been saying, 
" It is true," to the heart of man ? It seems to 
me that we may consider ourselves in a sort of 
fashion as standing related to the universe 
about us as a coin is related to a die. You 



236 Life Beyond Death 

pick up a clean, fresh twenty-dollar gold piece, 
and examine it ; and you feel perfectly certain 
that for every mark you find on the gold piece 
there will be something corresponding in the 
die. Have we not a right to feel that we as 
men and women are the products of this uni- 
verse in some such real sense as that ; so that 
whatever you find universal in all the lives 
that have ever been, in all the hearts that have 
ever felt, and in all the brains that have ever 
thought, — you feel that here is something 
which corresponds to the die, a reality in the 
universe that pressed upon and shaped us to 
what we are ? 

It seems to me that this is one of the most 
magnificent arguments with which I am famil- 
iar ; and yet somebody might tell me that Na- 
ture, in most cases from the beginning of the 
world, has been telling us things that were not 
quite true, that we have had to correct Na- 
ture's impressions from the very beginning, 
finding out generally that they were wrong. 
Some extreme doubter might meet us with a 
point like this ; and we should at least be a 
little discouraged, and wish we had something 
stronger to say. 

Then there is still one more argument, and 
this, — let us say it in spite of all the scepticism 



Probabilities and Hopes 237 

and agnosticism that have come out of modern 
science, — however we may be impressed by the 
worldly tradition, the materialistic tendencies 
and qualities of modern science, this is a gift 
of science, — and what is it ? — the death of ma- 
terialism. The Church from the very begin- 
ning has hurled her anathemas and thundered 
her anger against materialism ; but the Church 
from the very beginning until to-day has never 
seriously hurt it. Materialism has lived and 
flourished as intelligence flourished, grown as 
knowledge grew, until in these modern days 
it threatens to overcome the world. But the 
scientific men themselves have carried their 
studies so far as to learn that they cannot ex- 
plain the universe and man on the theory of 
materialism : and so you will find a man like 
Huxley facing every fact, ready to give up 
anything that he could not prove, and even 
saying that it was immoral to hold beliefs that 
could not be proved scientifically, — and I am 
inclined to agree with him, — we find a man like 
Huxley, who says, "If I am compelled to 
choose between the materialism of a man like 
Biichner," whom I have quoted as saying that 
thought was a product of the brain, just as 
bile was a product of the liver, " and the ideal- 
ism of Berkeley," who believed, as Christian 



238 Life Beyond Death 

Science teaches to-day, that all material things 
are mere temporary illusion, "I should have to 
agree with Berkeley." This is where science 
has come. He does not, by the way, agree 
with either of them : neither do I. But ma- 
terialism as an accepted theory of the universe 
is killed ; it is no longer correct science nor 
good philosophy. No man who holds any 
high rank in the scientific world to-day believes 
that thought is a product merely of the mo- 
lecular movements of the brain. Tyndall, who 
came as near being a materialist as any famous 
man of modern times, said that though there was 
always a correspondence between the molecular 
movements of the brain and the thought that 
accompanied those movements, yet the gulf of 
separation between them was just as impassa- 
ble to-day as it was in the savage periods of 
the history of the world. And when you have 
proved beyond question that mind, feeling, 
love, — these things, — are infinitely more than 
planets, than stars ; that they rule the world, 
are the mightiest powers on the face of the 
earth ; you have gone a good way towards 
proving that they can get along without matter ; 
but, unfortunately again, simply that demon- / 
stration does not prove continued existence. ' 
I may know that mind is more than matter ; 



Probabilities and Hopes 239 

that my brain, that can measure the sun, is 
unspeakably grander than any sun that shines 
in the depths of space. I may know that that 
sun will cease to exist. How ? Cease to exist 
as a sun. But there is not a single particle 
of its matter, not a particle of its accompany- 
ing force, that is going to cease to exist. So 
I may prove that my mind is mightier than 
the sun, and prove that mind, or its elements, 
will exist uncounted ages; but that does not 
prove, I must confess, that conscious personal 
existence of this same mind is going to continue 
for ever. 

Half the human race, nearly, believes to- 
day that mind is everything and matter is 
illusion ; and yet, at the same time, it uni- 
versally denies the conscious personal exist- 
ence of the soul. So that the two do not 
necessarily go together, and believing one is 
not quite enough to prove the other. 

Now, I have one point more with which to 
tax your patience, and this is more impressive, 
to my thinking, than any of the others with 
which I have yet dealt ; and it is the drama of 
this universe, — how it started, how far it has 
gone, and what the probable outcome of it is to 
be, on the theory that the universe is sane. 

Let us go back so many million years that 



240 Life Beyond Death 

there is no use of even trying to count them 
for the moment, to a time when the whole of 
space that is now occupied by any part of the 
universe that we can investigate with our 
largest telescopes was fire-mist, chaos, con- 
taining neither planet nor sun, nor satellite of 
any kind. The whole space filled with a mist 
so heated that there were none of the minut- 
est particles of it that were in contact with 
each other, a gas so tenuous that it never 
could be investigated. Then millions of years 
roll away, the fire-mist moves and starts up 
centres of rotation ; and by and by you have 
somewhere in the midst of it a nebula, or neb- 
ulae, only a thicker condensation of fire-mist, 
but with perhaps a centre a little more dense 
than the outermost parts. The motion goes 
on ; by and by the centre separates itself from 
the outermost parts by its greater rapidity of 
motion, and so flings off a ring, — such a ring 
as you may discover around Saturn to-day. 
This ring cools, breaks, its parts tumble to- 
gether, and by their rotation assume the form 
of a sphere and begin their motion around the 
greater central mass. The central mass flings 
off another ring, and that falls into fragments 
and coheres into another sphere, and the cen- 
tral mass flings off another ring. This is the 



Probabilities and Hopes 241 

process, they tell us, that had been going on 
in the formation of our little solar system, the 
outer ones flung off first and then another and 
another, until we got down to our little earth, 
which, in the process of its cooling, threw off 
a ring which condensed and made our moon. 

Now, after thousands of years had gone by, 
this little earth of ours became cool enough 
so that certain kinds of life could live upon it 
in the ooze by the water's edge, — certain kinds 
of fish, tiny plants, tiny animals or animalculse ; 
and the process of cooling and of the evolution 
of life and its climbing from the lower forms to 
the higher went on. We have the fishes, the 
reptiles, and the birds, then mammals, all the 
gigantic animals, and then, at last, a feeble sort 
of being that did not know it was man, that 
we now call by that name, — feebler than almost 
all the other animals of its size. There had 
been a marvellous development of the brain ; 
and, though it was weaker than almost all its 
enemies, it began to have the power to outwit 
its enemies, outknow, outthink them. Under 
the form of cunning it developed an ability to 
master the rest of the world. Then this cun- 
ning developed into the higher form, the intel- 
lect, which ruled mankind. Then this animal 

developed something higher than intellect, — 
16 



242 Life Beyond Death 

the power to love, and, out of love, came 
conscience ; and this strange creature became 
a moral being. And then out of the moral be- 
ing, and beyond it, began to appear a spiritual 
nature. 

Remember, then, that there was a time when 
the mightiest power on the face of the earth 
was muscle ; then there came a time when the 
mightiest power was a cunning that could out- 
wit muscle ; then a time of a higher form of 
intellect, which was superior to muscle or cun- 
ning; then love and a conscience, which was 
mightier than they, until to-day, in spite of all 
the evil that there is in the world, the mightiest 
power on the face of the earth is the moral 
ideal. The Czar of Russia, the Emperor of 
Germany, the Queen of England dare not go 
to war without appealing to the conscience of 
mankind, and claiming that the war is right 
and just. The moral ideal, then, in spite of 
what you may think this old world to be, is the 
mightiest power on the planet. 

Now, the next step, the next logical, natural 
step, seems to me to be a development of the 
spiritual nature, provided man is a spiritual 
being, as I think we shall prove indubitably 
before we are through. If you had been 
present when cunning was beginning to outwit 



Probabilities and Hopes 243 

muscle, there was a long period of time when 
it would have been a question with you as to 
which would have come out ahead in this age- 
long battle. For you must not think these 
battles were decided in a year or a century. 
It was hundreds of thousands of years that 
this process was going on. 

Suppose you had been present when one of 
these transition periods was passing by ? What 
would you have found ? You would have 
found here and there sporadic manifestations 
of the higher life, merely a promise, of the 
kind that makes you think of spring when you 
see the early buds. But there may come a 
storm, and all the blossoms be hidden after 
that. So you never would have been certain 
as to how long this process had been in taking 
place. 

So we are to-day in regard to scientific study. 
The four thousand years of the world that we 
can clearly claim to be historical when com- 
pared with the time of the human race on this 
planet is not an hour in a day : it is rather one 
hour perhaps in a week. Is it not perfectly 
natural, then, that, beginning with the first we 
know of our human history, there should have 
been spasmodic, sporadic manifestations of what 
we call the spiritual nature of man, breaking 



244 Life Beyond Death 

through the guise of flesh ; that there should 
now and then, if we are whelmed and sur- 
rounded in a spirit world, appear a face, as 
in a glimpse, a voice be heard, a hand felt 
by someone more than usually psychically sen- 
sitive? Is not this just what on that theory 
you would have expected ? Is not that the 
kind of progress of the world Paul outlines, 
when he says, " First the blade, and then the 
ear, and then" — long after that — "the full 
corn in the ear " ? 

In other words, as an evolutionist, first, last, 
and all the time an evolutionist, I believe that 
we are to-day beginning to have manifestations 
of a new and higher, a more spiritual type of 
man that ought to be precisely what we should 
be looking for. The world is getting ripe for 
it. We are on the edge of it ; and I believe 
with my whole soul that it will not be long 
before immortality will be as much discovered 
as America was discovered by Columbus. 
These spasmodic manifestations that have been 
seen, and heard, and felt in all religions, in all 
races, for the last three or four thousand years, 
are just the first little blossoms of spring, frost- 
nipped, trodden under foot, and forgotten ; but 
they have been prophecy, and the prophecy of 
that which I believe is to come. 



XII 

THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 
AND THE IMMORTAL LIFE 

THE writer of the first Epistle to the 
churches of Thessalonica, in the fifth 
chapter and twenty-first verse, has used words 
which might well be the motto of this Society. 
They are words which are a justification for all 
scientific inquiry. They are words which are 
a condemnation of any blind faith or the ac- 
ceptance of positions for which there is no evi- 
dence. These words are, " Prove all things." 
Prove all things : test all things, try all things, 
criticise all things, investigate all things. 
"Holdfast that which" — bears the test — "is 
good " ; throw the rest away. / 

This has been the motto of science, of course, 
in all ages ; but even to-day, so far from its 
being the motto of most religious thinkers, 
writers, speakers, it is the precise opposite. 
Recently, in one of the leading papers of the 
city, there was a discussion concerning the case 

~ 845 



246 Life Beyond Death 

of Dr. Briggs which took this ground : that a 
belief in immortality, the Bible as an inspired 
book, religious truth of any kind, simply could 
not be proved in accordance with the scientific 
method, or received on the basis of reason. 
And this was by a writer speaking in defence of 
the Church and of religion who said the Church, 
religion, the Bible, immortality, — all these 
things, — if received at all, must be received 
simply by faith, — that they cannot bear the test 
of reason. He would have gone on to say that 
they are above and beyond reason. After you 
have put reason out of court, what reason is 
there for believing anything, or believing one 
thing more than another? There is literally 
no reason left, after you have put it away. 
Therefore, literally, there is no reason why a 
man who takes this position should not ac- 
cept Buddhism or Mohammedanism as well as 
Christianity. There is no reason left why he 
should believe anything, — no reason left why 
he should believe any one thing more than 
any other. 

Therefore, the man who takes this position, 
it seems to me, goes a little too far for the de- 
fence of his own proposition. But this is the 
attitude that has been taken, not only toward 
most of the great religious problems of the 



Psychical Research 247 

world, by the Churches of the past and the 
great Churches of the present : it is the posi- 
tion that has been taken in regard to this very 
matter. 

I received a private letter recently in which 
the writer said he had been corresponding with 
two of the great theologians of the country, 
one a Congregationalist, the other a Methodist, 
the Methodist being a bishop, and that both 
of them had said that they never expected to 
find anything like absolute proof of a future 
life, — they took it on faith, and did not believe 
that proof was possible. """' 

So you see this same position of surrender- 
ing the possibility of proof extends, not only 
to most of the great Church dogmas, but to 
this question that agitates the hearts that have 
ever loved or ever lost, as to whether or no 
death is the end of all. 

We have traced briefly, as has been neces- 
sary, in broad outline but with sufficient clear- 
ness, the beliefs of man from the beginning as 
to the life beyond death ; and we have come 
to this point, which is a most significant one. 
As I have already said, men have held all sorts 
of strange attitudes toward this profoundest of 
all questions. They have believed on what they 
called faith ; that is, the authority of somebody 



248 Life Beyond Death 

whose statements they have taken on trust. 
They have reverenced some of these claims 
as a part of their religion. They have sneered 
at some as ghost stories, in the daylight 
and in companionship with their friends ; they 
have cringed and cowered with fear lest 
such things as ghosts might be real, when they 
were alone and in the dark. They have 
taken almost every conceivable kind of attitude 
toward these questions except one of rational 
inquiry. 

It seems to me, indeed, most, striking that 
from the beginning of the world until within 
the last decade or two there has never been on 
the part of humanity anything like a serious 
investigation of a series of claimed facts, which, 
if true, or only partly true, are the most im- 
portant facts in all the world. Think of it ! 
Until the year 1882, to be specific, whatever 
particular individuals may have done, humanity 
had never made a combined, serious, scientific 
attempt to find the truth in this great matter ! 

Some people have said that, if God had 
intended us to know, He would have told us 
about it in the first place. Why not apply 
that to every problem ? God told primitive 
man very little. He did not even tell him what 
was good to eat and what was poison : he had 



Psychical Research 249 

to find it out by experience. He has abso- 
lutely, in this sense, told us nothing. He has 
revealed Himself in the facts, the wonders, the 
glorious on-going life of the universe, but has 
left us to read these hieroglyphics, and find out 
their meaning for ourselves. He has done 
this in every department of thought and life. 
Why not here ? 

Then there are a great many persons who 
bravely tell us that, however interesting it is, 
there is no use in trying to find out the truth in 
any scientific way, because it is impossible of 
discovery. How do they happen to know it is 
impossible ? Great men in the past have told 
us that many things were impossible which are 
every-day occurrences now. So we will not be 
quite content to take it on the dictum of any- 
body that it is impossible to discover another 
life. 

If that other life be, — if it is not merely a 
fancy or a dream, — why should we assume that 
it is undiscoverable ? I know no reason ; and 
I believe that the human race will keep on in 
its attempts, knocking at the door until it opens, 
if any door there be. Humanity has been 
advised ever since I can remember, and I pre- 
sume for a good many centuries before that, to 
give up trying to find the North Pole ; and it 



250 Life Beyond Death 

has been said over and over again that it would 
do no good to find it, anyway, and that it was 
impossible to find it, even if it would. But 
humanity has never given it up ; and it will not, 
until it reaches there. So you may advise 
humanity as much as you please to give up 
seeking for an answer to this problem, — If a 
man die, shall he live again ? I do not believe 
it ever will be given up until the answer is 
found. 

It is a little curious that so many men, re- 
ligious men, should tell us that it is impossible 
— that they should believe a line in Shakespeare 
rather than their own Bibles. I have heard it 
quoted over and over again, as though it were 
the summing up and the quintessence of all 
wisdom, that it is " a country from whose 
bourne no traveller returns." Yet this flatly 
contradicts their Bibles and every religion on 
the face of the earth ; for every one of them 
assumes and teaches as facts that somebody at 
some time has come from beyond that bourne 
with a message to us here. And that is the 
reason, deep down in their hearts, — literally, 
the remnant of a tradition of that sort, — that 
they believe. The only point is that they 
assume that what God has done or what the 
people have done over and over again cannot 



Psychical Research 251 

be done now and is never going to be done 
again. 

With so much of preliminary, let me come 
to indicate to you in outline, but with perhaps 
sufficient clearness and force, so that you shall 
see what it is about, the work of the Society 
for Psychical Research. 

This Society was organised in England in 
the year 1882. It was organised in this country 
— and I was one of its corporate members, 
having studied facts that it proposed to investi- 
gate for years before it was organised — in the 
year 1885. 

The first president of the Society in England 
was Professor Henry Sidgwick, of Cambridge 
University, and one of the greatest ethical 
writers of this century. Of the original vice- 
presidents, five have died. Among these was 
Professor Balfour Stewart, one of the best 
scientific men of his age ; another, Richard H. 
Hutton, for many years editor of the London 
Spectator, one of the great papers of England. 
Two other original vice-presidents still occupy 
their position, — the Right Hon. Arthur J. Bal- 
four, one of the famous names in modern Eng- 
land, Member of Parliament, a Fellow of the 
Royal Society ; and Professor W. F. Barrett, 
of Dublin University. Mr. Edmund Gurney, 



252 Life Beyond Death 

who died in the midst of his work, and Mr. F. 
W. H. Myers are two other names famous 
around the world. Mr. Myers I shall probably 
refer to again, — one of the great essayists and 
a well-known writer of the present time. 

In this country we have not had so many great 
names : but we have accomplished some of the 
most important work right here among our- 
selves. I will name a few : Professor S. P. 
Langley, of the Smithsonian Institution in 
Washington ; Professors Bowditch, Pickering, 
and Royce, connected with Harvard College ; 
and one of the keenest and most interested 
workers of all, perhaps the greatest psycholo- 
gist living, the man who is recognised through- 
out Europe as well as America as a leader in 
that direction, and whose leadership is being 
recognised by the fact that he is to go to Ox- 
ford for the next two years and lecture there on 
his special theme, — Professor William James, 
a brother of the famous novelist, Henry James. 
Professor James H. Hyslop, of Columbia Col- 
lege, is another man engaged in this work. 

There are also Lord Rayleigh, Professor 
Ramsey, F.R.S., and Professor Lodge, — one 
of the greatest mathematicians and physicists 
living in England at the present time. One 
who has played an important part in the recent 



Psychical Research 253 

work of the Society over there, is Professor W. 
F. Barrett, of Dublin, who was active in start- 
ing the work both in England and here. One 
more I must speak of, because he is at present 
the president of the Society in England. This 
is Sir William Crookes, F.R.S., the inventor 
of the Crookes tube that has played so large a 
part in connection with the X-rays during the 
last two or three years, and who has occupied 
one of the foremost positions in the scientific 
life and work of England during the last 
twenty-five years. 

In this country Bishop Brooks, Rev. R. 
Heber Newton, and others have been intensely 
interested in the work, and have added to it as 
much as they were able. And, while there are 
a great many people who for one reason or an- 
other think that this matter is hardly worth 
their time and attention, let me give you the 
word of a man like Gladstone, — Gladstone, the 
foremost statesman of his age ; Gladstone, 
who held in his hand problems of war and 
peace, not only in Europe, but in all the world ; 
Gladstone, the Churchman from head to foot, 
the orthodox believer in the Trinity, the Bible, 
Biblical and ecclesiastical tradition ; Gladstone, 
one of the greatest brains, one of the pur- 
est hearts, one of the keenest controversialists 



254 Life Beyond Death 

of his time. He accepted an honorary mem- 
bership in this Society, — honorary, because 
he was too busy to do work connected with 
it, but was glad to have his name associated 
with it. And, in accepting it, he writes, 
" It " — that is, the work of the Society for 
Psychical Research — " is the most important 
work which is being done in the world — by far 
the most important." He, the stateman, watch- 
ing the changes, the institutions, the growth, 
the plots, the failures, the successes of nations ; 
he, keenly interested in theological problems ; 
he, looking at psychical research, and under- 
standing all that science has accomplished, 
with all its adventures and discoveries, — he 
says that this one thing is the most important 
work that is being done in the world. 

I have told you that ; I have been saying it 
for years ; but the opinion of a man like Glad- 
stone carries weight with everybody who 
thinks. Gladstone does not say, " I am a 
Churchman, I have it in the Bible, I have it in 
ecclesiastical tradition, and that is enough : " 
but he says this work of yours done in attempt- 
ing to prove it scientifically is the most im- 
portant work in the world ! / 

Now, what is the attitude of these men ? 
Professor Sidgwick in his inaugural address, 



Psychical Research 255 

challenged the world, saying to men of science 
and men of thought everywhere : Here are 
certain strange alleged facts, — -facts testified to 
since the beginning of the world, facts testified 
to in every nation to-day. Are they true ? Are 
they false ? He challenged the scientific world 
in England by the statement : It is a scandal 
to intelligent, thinking men and students that 
this problem should not be settled. It is a 
scandal that the world should not find out 
whether these things are true or not. And 
this is the spirit in which he undertook the 
investigation. 

And remember that no member of this 
society commits himself to a belief in anything. 
He simply promises seriously and earnestly to 
investigate with the one purpose, if possible, 
of finding out what is true. That is all. 
That is the attitude which they took from the 
beginning, and no member of the Society is 
committed to the belief of any other member. 
In other words, it occupies precisely the same 
position that any great scientific organisation 
occupies anywhere, — its one aim is truth. It 
is possible, for example, that an astronomer 
may think he has made a discovery in the 
heavens, and he reports this to the Society, but 
the other astronomers doubt it. They do not 



256 Life Beyond Death 

think he has brought adequate proof yet ; and 
so they wait and study until the proof is over- 
whelming and all reasonable men are obliged 
to accept it, or until it is decided that it was a 
mistake in the first place, and that no sufficient 
evidence can be found. This is the attitude of 
this Society, then. So that, if towards the end 
I shall tell you the opinions of certain members 
of this Society, you will understand that they 
do not bind the opinions of anybody else at 
all, and that these men expect the world to be 
convinced only when sufficient evidence has 
been brought to bear down all unbelief and all 
opposition. 

Now, what are the things that these men are 
studying? You know that not so long ago 
there was a man in France, by the name of 
Mesmer, who discovered what he called " Mes- 
merism," or what came to be called Mesmerism, 
after his name. It was scoffed at by all wise 
people as nonsense. A scientific committee of 
investigation was appointed ; and they looked 
the matter all through, as they supposed, and 
reported it all fraud and humbug. There is 
not an intelligent man on the face of the earth 
to-day, however, that does not know that it, 
and a good deal more, is true : only to-day it 
is called "hypnotism" instead of Mesmerism," 



Psychical Research 257 

— that is all ; and it is being used as a part of 
the medical armory, a storehouse of weapons 
against disease, by hundreds of the best phy- 
sicians in France and Germany, in England 
and America. 

Then there are many other facts. There 
are questions of the " subliminal conscious- 
ness," as it is called. We know that the mind 
works when we are asleep, or when our ordinary 
consciousness is engaged in attending to some- 
thing else. So that this subliminal conscious- 
ness of ours became a fact for investigation. 
Then there are clairaudience, clairvoyance. 
There is the visible movement of physical 
bodies without any visible reason for their 
moving ; there is the playing of musical in- 
struments by no visible fingers or hands ; there 
are visions, there are voices, there are scenes 
and experiences on death-beds ; there are what 
are called hauntings, wraiths, doubles, phan- 
tasms of the dead and of the living. There is 
no sort of question that there are phantasms 
of both the dead and the living ; but no 
scientific man takes that as proving immortality. 
It simply raises a question as to what they are 
and what they mean. But that what we call 
ghosts exist, no unprejudiced student has the 

slightest doubt. 
17 



258 Life Beyond Death 

So there are all these various fields of re- 
search. There are the reports of houses that 
are haunted. There are trances, visions, voices, 
automatic writings. These are claimed facts ; 
and it is a little strange that they have been 
claimed from the beginning of human history, 
only they have never been seriously or scien- 
tifically investigated before. I confess to you 
that it would be a relief to me to find out that 
there was truth in them, if only for the sake of 
finding out that the human race has not been 
crazy for ages. If there is only a grain of 
truth, no matter how exaggerated the stories 
have been, it would run a luminant light of 
reason up along the path of the human race. 
Nobody doubts Tacitus, the Roman historian, 
when he talks of other things ; and he tells 
these stories. He was a little wild and credu- 
lous, as we say, when stories of this kind are 
told. So we have been accustomed to throw 
them away instead of investigating and finding 
if there were not the shadow of some great 
truth in them. 

Now, this Society for Psychical Research, 
both in England and America, set itself seri- 
ously about investigating these matters, just as 
they would investigate a bone of an animal 
dug up from the earth or the remains of a leaf 



Psychical Research 259 

preserved in a rock, or some other equally im- 
portant matter. And I submit to you whether 
this matter is not as important as bones or 
petrified leaves or the dredging of the bottom 
of the sea, or any of the great objects of scien- 
tific research ? But, when I find a man who 
devotes his life to the study of petrified leaves 
or the bones of animals, or to something of 
this sort, and who scouts and sneers at these 
great questions, it seems to me that he is ex- 
alting that which is little and belittling that 
which is great. For, if the Society for Psy- 
chical Research does no more, it has already 
unspeakably enlarged the boundaries of hu- 
man thought concerning man himself. Up to 
the present time there has been no dark conti- 
nent or " Darkest Africa " on the face of the 
earth so dark as the mind of man ; and out of 
this mind of man have been coming reports 
and beliefs of ten thousand mysterious things, 
which have whispered and promised wonders 
beyond human imagination. Now, if we do 
nothing more than add new continents to our 
knowledge of human nature, it seems to me 
that is worth while. It seems to me that, only 
next to the question of immortal life, that is 
the most important subject on the face of the 
earth. 



260 Life Beyond Death 

Now, I may put in a little of my own per- 
sonal observation as I continue, although I am 
not to enter into personal detail concerning 
my own investigations here. Here are these 
claimed facts, — strange, indeed, if they are 
true, and strange, yes, perhaps stranger, in 
view of the fact that the world has always 
been accepting them, if they be not true. 
Now, how can we conceivably explain them ? 
Take all these things that form the subject 
of the study of the Society for Psychical Re- 
search. How can these facts be explained? 

First, you can explain them, as thousands of 
people do, by saying that they are all fraud 
from the beginning. 

In the next place, you can explain a great 
many of them as being illusion, misconception 
on the part of the sitter or of the psychic. 

Then, in the third place, you can range 
them under the theory of telepathy. 

When you have passed telepathy, if you go 
beyond it at all, you are over the. border-land 
in spite of yourself, and in the presence of in- 
visible intelligences, all of whom always claim 
that they used to live here on this earth. Now, 
I know perfectly well, and the Society for 
Psychical Research has discovered over and 
over again, that there is any amount of fraud. 



Psychical Research 261 

There are a great many people in this world 
willing to get their living in what happens to 
be the easiest way, and whether or no it neces- 
sitates telling the truth or avoiding deception 
of other people, does not seem to trouble their 
consciences much. So, if there is an opportunity 
to get an easy living by simulating or assuming 
these things, you may be sure it is not lost. 
The men who do business on Wall Street, 
know that there are a good many such people 
engaged in business. Then, naturally, there 
is a good deal of self-deception. Unless a 
person is experienced in the matter, when he 
goes and sits with a psychic, he is pretty sure 
to tell the psychic all that is necessary to be 
known on the subject. He "gives himself 
away," as we say, by his tattle about himself. 

Then there are a great many strange ex- 
periences which the psychic passes through for 
which he or she flies off to the land of spirits 
in search of an explanation, when an explana- 
tion could be found a good deal nearer home. 
And you know it is one of the cardinal prin- 
ciples of science to seek the nearest, the easiest, 
the most rational explanation. 

But now we come to telepathy. I have 
known intimately Dr. Richard Hodgson, who 
is at the head of the Society in this country, 



262 Life Beyond Death 

and who is one of the most careful scientific, 
sceptical investigators that I have ever known ; 
and he told me it was his avowed intention to 
explain every conceivable fact without having 
anything to do with spirits, if he possibly could. 
He was bound as a scientist to stretch every 
other theory until it broke before he would 
admit the possibility of our having to do with 
anybody who had passed beyond the border- 
land of what we call death. But the Society 
for Psychical Research has demonstrated over 
and over again that telepathy, at least, is true. 
I know it is true from my own experiences. 

What does this mean ? It means that 
minds separate as far as from London to India 
communicate with each other, without even 
wireless telegraphy to help them ; that, in the 
case of sudden accident or death,— that is, 
when one soul cries out for its mate, — that 
mate hears and knows what is taking place. 
Now, if things like this happened only once 
or twice or thrice, or ten or twenty times, 
perhaps you would say it was mere coincid- 
ence ; but, when they happen a hundred or a 
thousand times, the coincidence theory grows 
more difficult than the other one. 

And, in regard to the attempt of people 
generally to explain these super-normal facts, 



Psychical Research 263 

I have found a great many explanations harder 
to accept than the original facts. I have felt 
about it somewhat as the old lady did who 
borrowed a copy of the Pilgrims Progress 
with Scott's notes, which were intended to be 
explanatory and helpful. She brought the 
book back, saying she understood it all except 
the notes. I have the same feeling some- 
times in studying these matters, — that they are 
plain enough except the explanations ; and 
they seem a good deal harder for me to accept 
than the natural, claimed fact. 

I know a case of telepathy, I know it beyond 
question, between the Indian Ocean and this 
city of New York. We have not discovered 
the law yet. We have not brought it under 
control, any more than we have wireless tele- 
graphy. I am not at all certain that we shall 
not by and by. Think what it means, you 
who are astonished at the telephone and tele- 
graph and the thousand advances and dis- 
coveries of the world, — think what it means for 
two minds or two hearts or two souls to come 
into contact, when separated by the diameter 
of the globe. Is there any other wonder of 
the modern world to compare with it ? 

By way of suggestion as to a possible scien- 
tific explanation of it which may come by and 



264 Life Beyond Death 

by, let me say this. We know that when two 
musical instruments are placed a certain dis- 
tance apart, and keyed so as precisely to corre- 
spond with each other, one will sometimes 
respond when the other is touched. It is pos- 
sible that there may be such a thing as minds 
or brain molecules keyed to each other so that, 
when some great sorrow or anticipated evil or 
stress touches one of them, there is response 
in the other, no matter how great the distance 
that may separate them. 

Telepathy, then, is established. Clairvoyance, 
clairaudience are established. Nobody who 
knows anything about them denies that they 
are true, whatever their explanation may be. 
There are people who see without eyes and 
hear without ears ; that is, who see and hear 
apart from the ordinary use of the physical 
organs supposed to be necessary for the exer- 
cise of those functions. What does this mean ? 
It just suggests, does it not, that, if the soul 
can begin right here to get along without the 
use of its ordinary senses, it may be possible 
for it to get along without them altogether? 
It suggests it, I say ; it does not prove it. I 
think you must have heard the story of the 
Second Adventist who thought he would star- 
tle Emerson by telling him that the world was 



Psychical Research 265 

coming to an end in a week or two. " Well, 
suppose it is, my friend," was Emerson's reply. 
" I think I can get along without it." 

So it is possible, that if we can get along 
without the use of the ordinary senses to a 
certain degree, we might go farther, and say 
that there is a way of living without these 
bodies that so frequently seem to be the whole 
of us. 

But passing beyond telepathy, which the 
Society for Psychical Research has proved be- 
yond question, there are all the other subjects 
for investigation — hauntings, ghosts, every 
kind of vision and trance. If you will study, 
you will find that an attempt has been made 
to explain all these by telepathy. We have 
come now to face the fact, however, that there 
are many important things which certain peo- 
ple in the Society think cannot be explained 
by telepathy. For instance, Frederick W. H. 
Myers has published to all the world his belief 
that, as the result of his investigations as a 
member of the Society for Psychical Research, 
there is no such thing as death. He thinks it 
is scientifically demonstrated that those we 
call dead are alive, and that occasionally, be- 
yond any question, they communicate with us. 
Professor Lodge, one of the leading physical 



266 Life Beyond Death 

scientists and mathematicians of England, has 
come to the same conclusion. Dr. Hodgson, 
a graduate of Cambridge in England, who has 
travelled all over the world, and is one of the 
finest scientific investigators I have known, 
after fighting against this conviction for years, 
has at last published to the world that he is 
compelled by his facts to believe that those 
whom we call dead are alive ; is compelled to 
believe that we do get communications from 
them now and then. He feels perfectly sure 
that he has had communication after commun- 
ication with personal friends of his own, and 
that he has established beyond any scientific 
question the fact of personal identity. 

Now, let me indicate to you a moment the 
direction in which this study leads. I investi- 
gated this matter years before there was any 
Psychical Society. I did it because my parish- 
ioners were coming to me for help and sympa- 
thy ; and I found I ought to have something 
better than prejudice to give them. I never 
tried to get into communication with a per- 
sonal friend, as dearly as I should love to do 
so. I have never made that my object. I 
have simply studied to find if there be any 
truth here. 

Now, let me give you my word for one thing. 



Psychical Research 267 

I have had psychics tell me so many times 
things which I knew there was no earthly pos- 
sibility of the psychic's having ever known 
anything about, that it has become a common- 
place to me : it does not astonish me any more 
than to talk through the telephone. It has 
happened hundreds of times, and I have pur- 
sued this question with the same rigid method 
by which I would study a brick or a bone : for 
I do not want to be fooled or be the means of 
fooling anyone else. So, up to this time, 
psychics have told me over and over and over 
again, and it has happened hundreds of times 
in the investigations of the Society, things 
which the psychic did not know, could not 
have known ; but I have always said, when it 
happened to me : That is not enough. / knew 
it. And, possibly, though I do not know how, 
my mind may in some strange, mystic way 
have been reflected in the mind of the psychic 
— it may have been a case of telepathy or 
mind-reading. So I must have something 
more. 

At last that which I sought for came. I 
have been told things over and over, perfectly 
natural things, things that concerned me and 
what claimed to be the teller on the other side. 
I have had important things told me that by 



268 Life Beyond Death 

no possibility could the psychic — who was not 
a public professional psychic at all, but a per- 
sonal friend — have known, and which I could 
not have known. I have had, for example, a 
thing like this told me : how a person was 
feeling, and what a person was doing, two 
hundred miles away at the time — a message 
quicker than the telegraph could have brought, 
that which by no possibility either of us could 
have known. I have had internal mental ex- 
periences of sorrow and trouble that were 
buried in the heart of a friend, and of which I 
had never dreamed, brought to me over and 
over again. 

Whether you have investigated it or not, 
these things are facts ; and, if they are true, 
they take us beyond mind-reading, they take 
us beyond telepathy. Think for a moment of 
the kind of explanations I have had people 
offer. They have said, in the face of certain 
facts I have given them, " How do you know 
that your subliminal consciousness, that con- 
sciousness which is below what we ordinarily 
call consciousness, your sub-conscious self — 
how do you know that that sub-conscious self 
does not tap Omniscience, and get at the facts 
of the universe ? " Such seem to me infinitely 
more difficult explanations than the facts 



Psychical Research 269 

themselves, — more strange, more outre", harder 
to accept or believe. 

So, with me, it has come to this : that, after 
years of investigation, a large number of the 
leading thinkers, students, authors, scientists, 
physical scientists, chemists, mathematicians 
— great minds — have come to believe that 
there is no possible way of explaining that 
which has been over and over again proved to 
be fact, without supposing that they have been 
in communication with some invisible intelli- 
gence. That at present is my own belief. I 
do not hold it dogmatically. If somebody can 
give me an explanation for my facts, I will 
take it. I want only the truth. But I hold 
this at present as what a scientist would call a 
" provisional hypothesis," as an adequate ex- 
planation for my facts until I can get a simpler 
and better one. That they are facts, I know ; 
and that these facts take us over the bor- 
der and whisper in our ears the certainty of 
immortal life, I believe. And I believe not on 
faith, not on the basis of tradition, not because 
of anything the Bible says ; though in saying 
this I am not criticising or depreciating the 
Bible. I believe because a fact has come to 
me and been handled by myself — a fact which 
I can explain in no other way. 



270 Life Beyond Death 

If this be true, friends, as I have told you 
before, there are no other problems on the 
face of the earth that need trouble us. The 
moral problem as to whether God's govern- 
ment seems good and merciful or not is of no 
account in the face of the certainty of an im- 
mortal life and the chance of an immortal evo- 
lution ; the question as to whether we are rich 
or poor is of no account ; the question as to 
whether we are sick or well is of no account ; 
the question of the loss of friends becomes di- 
minished to a little temporary separation with 
the certainty of an everlasting union. 

Believing this, death is wiped out ; and an 
immortal career opens before us, leading to 
the highest heights that imagination can con- 
ceive, and suggesting that, when we have 
reached those, only something finer and better 
still remains. 



XIII 

POSSIBLE CONDITIONS OF ANOTHER 
LIFE 

I TRUST that I shall be understood as not 
dogmatising, not assuming to tell you 
things which I claim surely to know. I speak 
with no authority. I give only what seem to 
me to be rational thoughts and theories con- 
cerning another life, of the fact of which I feel 
perfectly certain. 

When we come to the last moment of life, 
as we call it here, I believe that we shall find 
it not a horror, not a pain, but only a lovely 
sleep. Those who have the best right to an 
opinion on this subject will always tell you 
that in ten thousand cases there is rarely any 
consciousness of suffering in the fact of dying. 
Let us, then, put away from us that one fear. 
We may suffer a good deal during the rest of 
our lives. I do not believe we shall suffer in 
the process of passing from this world to the 
next. 

-. 271 



272 Life Beyond Death 

Neither do I believe that there is going to 
be any marked or sudden change in us. Were 
I to die at this moment, I believe that, on my 
first coming to consciousness in the other life, 
I should be simply just myself. I see nothing 
whatever in the fact or process of dying that 
should make any marked change in us, any 
more than, as I have said, our going to sleep 
last night and waking up this morning has 
made another kind of being of us. 

I think we have distorted all our ideas of 
the other life by our theological speculations, 
and by supposing that death is a line, the mo- 
ment we have crossed which, our destiny is 
fixed, and we are either devils or angels for- 
ever. I do not believe that we change. We 
carry with us our personal consciousness, our 
memory of what we have been, and who have 
been our friends, and those most closely asso- 
ciated with us. If I could be persuaded that I 
was to enter another life, and at the same time 
was to forget all about this one, and who I 
have been while here, I would not wish its 
possession. It would mean absolutely nothing 
to me. I believe that I shall wake up from 
that sleep conscious of the past, conscious that 
I am I, and remembering and loving those 
who were dear to me here. 



Possible Future Conditions 273 

Neither do I believe, as some seem to, that 
the going out into that other world is into a 
strange and lonely country. When we came 
into this world, we were expected. Our com- 
ing was prepared for, and we were welcomed 
into arms of love and tenderest care. I do not 
believe that the next step ahead in the universe 
is into something poorer than was the occasion 
of our coming here. So I believe that we shall 
find ourselves among friends, in a place that 
shall seem very much like home, with people 
who, as Robert Collyer has somewhere and at 
some time said, are " just folks like the rest of 
us," so that there will be no lonely or sad 
waking up for us when we reach that other 
country. 

Now I wish to mark very distinctly one 
point that appears to me to be of great import- 
ance. We may be able, clearly, scientifically, 
beyond any question, to establish the fact of 
another life beyond this ; and yet we may 
never be able to know very much about it 
in detail until we get there. I speak of this, 
and wish to speak of it with emphasis, because 
a thousand times the question is asked me, why, 
if anybody has ever reported from the other 
side, have they not told us all about it ? 

Will you note carefully with me one fact ? 



274 Life Beyond Death 

All our knowledge here is limited of necessity 
by our past experience, the experience of the 
race. If I were to attempt to describe to you 
any new thing or any new place, I could do it 
only by comparing it with something with 
which you are already familiar ; and, just in so 
far as it was unlike anything with which you 
were familiar, just in so far it would be simply 
impossible for me to describe it to you so 
that you could have any intelligible idea of 

it- 
Suppose, for example, that I should come 

back from a journey in Central Africa ; and 

should sit down with a friend, and say, " I found 

a very strange and curious thing there ; " and 

he should say, "Well, what shape was it?" I 

would say : " It was not the shape of anything 

you ever saw. It was a new shape." " What 

colour was it ? " " It was a new colour." "What 

was it like?" "It was not like anything you 

ever saw." Do you not see that it would be 

absolutely impossible for me to explain it to 

him, though I might know about it and might 

be absolutely certain of the fact ? 

So, just in so far as this other life, which I 

believe is all around us, transcends the life 

with which we are familiar here, just in so far 

it is simply impossible for even an archangel 



Possible Future Conditions 275 

to describe it to us, to give us an intelligible 
picture of it. 

I sit down beside a Sioux Indian, and I talk 
to him about Herbert Spencer's philosophy. I 
may be familiar with it, but it is so far beyond 
any experience or development of thought that 
he has had, that it would be utterly impossible 
for us to understand each other. You sit 
down by a child of eight years, and let him ask 
you questions that imply twenty years of ex- 
perience, and can you make yourself plain ? 
You may know all about it. The child has 
had no experience in the light of which it 
could interpret the things that you would say. 
So it is nothing against the fact that some of 
us believe that another world has been discov- 
ered, and that occasionally a message comes 
from thence, that this message is not able to 
answer all the questions which curiosity may 
suggest. 

In the nature of things, as I have said, it is 
impossible for us to understand or comprehend, 
or clearly picture to ourselves, anything what- 
soever that transcends human experience. So 
you need not doubt the fact itself because you 
do not happen to know all about it and can 
find nobody who can tell you. 

Where is this other country ? The ancient 



276 Life Beyond Death 

peoples, as we have seen, put it frequently be- 
low the surface of the earth, or away in some 
far space of the heaven, thinking that the rain- 
bow might be a bridge over the abyss that led 
to this far-off paradise. Others have located 
it in Isles of the Blessed toward the sunset. 
In all conceivable places has the imagination 
of man located the other life. Our astron- 
omy, an astronomy learned and demonstrated 
since the principal theological creeds of the 
time were formulated, has compelled us to 
change our conception as to the definite loca- 
tion of any possible or conceivable spirit world. 
I am inclined to believe that it is very near us. 
It may fold this old earth of ours round, as 
does the atmosphere. Not that the inhabit- 
ants of it are compelled to remain always in 
contact with the earth ; for I believe that 
death releases us from the prisoning of one 
planet and makes us citizens of the universe. 
But I believe that this spirit world is all about 
us. It may be true, as Milton speculated when 
he said : 

" Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth 
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep." 

Now, take a word of the most authoritative 
scientist of the age as touching this matter. 



Possible Future Conditions 277 

Professor Jevons is one of the greatest author- 
ities of the world. In his famous book called 
Principles of Science he says, " We cannot 
deny the strange suggestion of Young that 
there may be independent worlds, some possi- 
bly existing in different parts of space, but 
others perhaps pervading each other unseen 
and unknown in the same space." 

Who is this Young that Jevons quotes ? 
He is the man who controverted the theory of 
light which was held by Newton, and converted 
the world to his theory, which is the universally 
accepted one to-day. In other words, he is 
one of the great names in the science of the 
world ; and he tells us that for anything our 
eyes and ears have to say to the contrary, we 
may be surrounded on every hand by other 
worlds, invisible, intangible to us. We are so 
apt — we people who think we know — to be 
the fools of our senses. 

Do you know that I can see, only after the 
ethereal vibrations reach a certain number in a 
second, and that the moment these vibrations 
pass beyond another certain number, I cease to 
see ? In other words, I can see a narrow space 
while these vibrations are kept within certain 
limits ; while on either hand the universe 
stretches off into infinity, invisible to our present 



278 Life Beyond Death 

sense. So I can hear within certain limits of 
ethereal vibrations ; up to a certain point I hear 
nothing. There is not produced on the drum 
of the ear the effect capable of being translated, 
— in the mysterious fashion of which we know 
nothing, — as sound to the brain. After a certain 
number of vibrations have been reached, all is 
again quiet to our senses. Huxley tells us that, 
if our ears were adapted to take in all the vibra- 
tions, the noises of the growing of flowers in 
the night would be as loud as a thunder- 
storm. 

In other words, — and this is what I wish 
you to get from what I am saying, — there may 
be millions of spiritual creatures walking the 
earth, pervading the atmosphere all around 
us, real, thrilling and throbbing with life, a 
life more intense than any we know anything 
about or can dream of, and our present senses 
take no cognisance of them whatsoever. Do 
not imagine, then, that a person or a thing 
cannot exist, because you cannot see or hear 
or feel that person or thing. 

Do these people inhabiting the other world 
have bodies ? I think so. I do not know what 
powers of imagination may be possessed by 
other people ; but what some people talk about 
as " pure spirit " means simply nothing at all 



Possible Future Conditions 279 

to me. Is there anything unscientific or un- 
reasonable in talking about the inhabitants of 
this other world as embodied? Nothing what- 
ever, to a man who really understands what he 
is talking about. Scientists are perfectly famil- 
iar with states of matter so ethereal that they 
are not cognisant to any of our senses. Thus 
real though invisible bodies may exist. Ninety- 
nine times in a hundred or nine hundred and 
ninety-nine times in a thousand, perhaps, they 
are humbug and fraud : but a " spirit " photo- 
graph is perfectly rational, and not in the 
slightest degree unscientific. I do not know 
that there ever was a fact of that sort ; but it 
is perfectly possible, — so far as science has 
anything to say about it — for the sensitive 
plate of a camera can see better than human 
eyes. You can photograph an invisible star. 
You can photograph the side of an old ship 
after it has been painted over and over until no 
human eye can detect the lettering under- 
neath ; and the photograph will show that 
which is covered by the coats of paint. A 
camera, then, may see better than we can. 

Let me give you one instance in this direc- 
tion as a suggestion. Alfred Russel Wallace is 
the most famous scientific man living on earth 
to-day. He made independently, and at about 



280 Life Beyond Death 

the same time, the discovery that Darwin 
made ; and from the Isles of the Southern Sea 
he sent home to Darwin a paper to be read 
at the British Association, setting forth this 
discovery. At this same time Darwin was 
writing his book, not knowing that anyone 
else was thinking the same thoughts. So this 
man shares, and will always share with Darwin 
the glory of discovering the central principle 
of evolution. He told me in conversation 
some years ago that he had carried on this 
practice of attempting to get photographs of 
the other world, with a friend in a private 
house, month after month ; and he said, " I 
got a perfectly recognisable photograph of my 
own mother, which was utterly unlike any 
picture taken of her during her life." If true, 
this could not have been a copy of anything in 
existence — except his mother. This is Wal- 
lace's testimony, which you may consider for 
what it is worth. 

So it is perfectly possible, I believe, that the 
inhabitants of the other world are embodied 
in some ethereal way, which we, perhaps, can- 
not understand to-day, and that they thrill and 
throb with life, in comparison to which this 
life of ours may seem to them almost a sleep. 

Now comes another question. I have been 



Possible Future Conditions 281 

asked it thousands of times I suppose. If our 
friends are about us and can see our suffering 
and struggle and temptation and disappoint- 
ment and tears, how can heaven be heaven to 
them? Before answering that question, as I 
intend to do, let me ask another. Which 
would you rather do, if you could have your 
choice when you leave this world — go away 
somewhere so far off that you can not by any 
possibility know what is happening to your 
loved ones, or would you rather be near by, 
even though they were suffering and you 
shared in part their pain ? I would rather be 
where I could know what was happening to 
my wife and children and friends, even if they 
were in trouble, than to be away off in some 
delectable spot in space, trying to forget about 
my loved ones here, in order that I might be 
happy. That would be no heaven to me. 

But here is another answer which seems to 
me absolutely conclusive. A mother, as she 
sits in her home with her little child playing 
at her feet, sometimes has an experience like 
this. The child breaks her doll or plaything 
of one kind or another; and this is a heart- 
breaking sorrow to the little one ; but it does 
not break the heart of the mother at all. She 
picks the child up in her lap, clasps her to her 



282 



Life Beyond Death 



heart, soothes and comforts her. She knows 
that it is but a passing sorrow, and is not going 
to cloud the child's life forever. So it seems 
to me that those who have found out to a 
certainty what the grand issue of life means, 
cannot be troubled because we shed a few tears 
over a loss in Wall Street or because we have 
a pain which may last us for a week. They 
know what is before us, they know it is to be 
victory in time ; and perhaps they know that 
these experiences of suffering that we are pas- 
sing through, are part of the training that is 
to make us capable of entering into the joy 
and felicity which they have found their 
own. 

There is another question. People ask me 
again and again — and I am answering these 
questions as though I believed — if the people 
in the other world, my friends in the other 
world, can communicate with anybody, why 
don't they come directly to me ? Why must 
they go to a psychic, a stranger, somebody 
about whom I know nothing ? 

In the first place, I tell you frankly, I do 
not know anything about it. But I have a 
theory which seems a me a very reasonable one. 
Let me ask a counter-question. If electricity 
will run along a wire — I am using the old 



Possible Future Conditions 283 

theory that electricity is a fluid, but I do not 
know what it is and do not know of anyone who 
does — if electricity can convey a message from 
Chicago to New York over a wire, why can- 
not it convey it over a board fence ? I do not 
know ; and there is nobody in the world who 
does know. We simply know the fact, and, 
knowing that, we do not waste our time trying 
to operate over board fences. If we want a 
message from a friend in Chicago, we expect 
it to come over the wire. 

Now, why cannot my friend come directly to 
me ? I do not know ; but, supposing the fact, 
Amy theory of it is this. I believe that what 
/ we, call psychic sensitiveness — that is, the 
/ ability to be impressed in a conscious way — 
might be compared to musical sensitiveness. 
Almost all persons have a little sense of musical 
sounds ; but there are very few who can master 
instruments or who can sing so that anybody 
wants to hear them — very few, indeed. But 
will you go without music because you must 
go to the experts, the masters, the musical 
geniuses, to get it ? Or will you sit at home, 
and say, " I will not have any music until my 
next-door neighbour can furnish it or I can 
furnish it myself ? " 

I do not know why we know only certain 



284 Life Beyond Death 

facts. I believe that this psychic sensitive- 
ness is something that we all share within cer- 
tain limits, but that there is only occasionally 
psychic genius, one so sensitive that he or she 
is usable, so to speak, in a practical way. 
That is my theory of it. I do not know why, 
but I do know the fact ; and I have known 
people — and I must indicate the unreason- 
ableness of it in passing — I have known 
people who said, " A friend of mine died 
ten years ago, and promised that, if it were 
possible, he would communicate with me, and 
let me know that he was really alive ; and I 
have heard nothing from him." And I have 
said over and over again, " Have you ever given 
him a chance ? and, if you have not, what right 
have you to find fault that he has not reported ? 
Perhaps it is your fault, and not your friend's." 
There is another point here. I believe that 
these friends of ours are ministering spirits. 
Not that they stay always by our side, but 
that many of them may be ministering spirits 
watching around us, rendering us service of 
which we have little knowledge, which we 
cannot comprehend or explain to-day. They 
may interfere sometimes to render us a signal 
service. To illustrate what I mean, and to 
show what seems to me to be a more rational 



Possible Future Conditions 285 

theory than that commonly held — some peo- 
ple believe that there have been "provid- 
ential" interferences in their lives — certain 
things have happened which seemed inex- 
plicable to them, at any rate ; and they wonder 
whether God has been caring for them in 
some special way. Now, I cannot think of 
God as partial. I cannot think that He hears 
the prayer of one person, and turns a deaf ear 
to the heart-breaking cry of thousands. That 
does not seem to me worthy of our thought 
about God. And yet there do happen these 
strange coincidences. I have a friend, Mrs. 
Mary A. Livermore, famous for her devoted 
services during the war, and one of the great- 
est woman speakers that the world has ever 
known. She told me how her life was saved 
during her travels in the West on a cer- 
tain occasion by her hearing and instantly 
obeying a voice. She did not know where it 
came from ; but she leaped, as the voice or- 
dered her to, from one side of a car to the 
other, and instantly the side where she had 
been sitting was crushed in and utterly de- 
molished. This she told me. I cannot believe 
that this was the interference of God ; but it 
may have been the interference of some friend 
in the invisible. And this may account for 



286 Life Beyond Death 

the fact that interferences happen at some 
times, and not at others. 

Suppose I am on the street to-morrow, and 
an accident happens to me. A friend may be 
in the neighbourhood, and see it and come to 
my rescue. But the friend may not be there. 
There may be no one cognisant of the fact, so 
no rescue may come to me. This seems to 
me a possible and very rational theory of ac- 
counting for what we call special providences 
or interferences on our behalf. 

And there may be a grain of truth in the 
Catholic doctrine of the saints. If I cry for 
help in my need, and a friend knows that I 
cry, and recognises that need, and can help 
me, and does help me, my prayer is answered ; 
though it may not have been by the interfer- 
ence of God, in the ordinary sense of that 
expression. So, possibly, these heart-cries of 
ours, that go up into what to us is the silence, 
may reach the ears and touch the hearts of the 
friends who are not so far away as we ordi- 
narily imagine ; and out of that unseen there 
may frequently come to us help and comfort 
and strength. J 

These are possibilities. I have not said one 
word thus far that any scientific man on the 
face of the earth has any right to contradict. 



Possible Future Conditions 287 

He may tell me, and tell me truly, that I 
have said a good many things that I cannot 
demonstrate ; and I grant it. But he cannot 
demonstrate that they are not true. He con- 
not prove the negative ; and he cannot prove 
them to be unreasonable. They are perfectly 
within the possibilities of the universe as we 
know it scientifically. 

Now, let us raise the question as to what it 
means to go over and live in that other life. 
Most of us, I suppose, have given up all fear 
of the old orthodox place of fire and torment ; 
but we carry in ourselves heavens and hells, 
and, though we may put out the fires of the 
infernal regions, we do not thus put out the 
fires in our own bosoms which we ourselves 
have kindled. So, if we wish happiness in that 
other life, we must cultivate that in us which 
is spiritual and which is good. It is sometimes 
said that much of the life we lead here will be 
of no use to us over yonder. It has been said, 
concerning certain men, "They made them- 
selves wonderful scholars in certain directions ; 
but they died young, and now what is the use 
of it all ? " As though any experience could 
be thrown away ! I do not believe it is thrown 
away at all. A man may cultivate himself by 
following some certain line. If he cultivate 



288 Life Beyond Death 

himself nobly and rightly, that general devel- 
opment of power may be just as valuable to 
him in some other pursuit, or in some other 
condition of life, as it is here. So that all the 
intelligence that we have wrought out, all the 
development of self-control, of character, of 
nobility, of love, of goodness — these things 
are imperishable, and are, perhaps, those which 
Jesus had in mind when he advised us to lay 
up treasures in heaven, and not on the earth 
— to lay up the treasures that are invisible in 
the place that is at present invisible, and where 
we may take them up and find them of value 
on our arrival. 

In that famous thirteenth chapter of First 
Corinthians, Paul says, " If we have knowledge, 
it shall pass away." He is discussing things that 
pass away and those that remain. He is right 
in certain directions. I may develop all kinds of 
knowledge in this life, and in the other land I 
may find myself in circumstances where that 
knowledge is of no value at all ; but the culti- 
vation I have gone through in acquiring that 
knowledge may be of unspeakable value to me. 

The intelligence, then, we may believe we 
carry with us. But, says some objector, — it 
is said a thousand times, printed in review 
articles, spoken of in lectures, — " How can we 



Possible Future Conditions 289 

think without the brain ? Is not the brain the 
only organ of thought ?" Professor James, of 
Harvard, whom I have often quoted, has a 
lecture on two phases of this problem of the 
other life ; and one of them is this phase : 
and he — one of the best expert authorities in 
the world — takes the ground that the objec- 
tion about the brain is foolish, sophistical, shal- 
low, and utterly worthless. In other words, one 
of the functions of brain at the present time 
may be thinking. The " I " that is back of the 
brain, or above it, may use it as the organ of 
thought and the communication of my thoughts 
to others in my present condition. But that 
does not prove at all that the "I" ceases to 
exist, and that there is no thinking done, when 
this brain gets tired and goes back to dust. 
To resort to a crude illustration, — you may at- 
tach a dynamo for a time to some particular 
machine. When you have removed that ma- 
chine, you have not destroyed the dynamo. 
You may attach it to some other machine, and 
find that you have there all the old-time power. 
The best scientific men of the world have 
told us that this objection is of no value. 
Thought is not the product of the brain, in 
that sense. There accompanies every effort 
of mind certain molecular movements in the 



290 Life Beyond Death 

brain. That is all. But it is not a case of 
cause and effect ; it is only concomitance. 
Thought coincides with the movements of 
the brain. 

We may carry, then, with us, all our magnifi- 
cently developed powers of thought. We 
carry love, which is the grandest thing in all 
the world and is the heart of heaven, whether 
that heaven be here or somewhere else. We 
carry with us pity and tenderness and sympa- 
thy. We carry all those things that we call 
spiritual, that are of value to us, that constitute 
our nobler and higher selves. The rest we 
leave behind, because we have got through 
with it, and do not need it any more. 

A word must be said as to possible occupa- 
tions in the life beyond death. The Sweden- 
borgians, following the great seer, tell us that 
heaven is almost a duplicate of the present 
life ; that almost all the occupations that we 
carry on here are carried on in some fashion 
over there. 

I believe that the thinker carries with him 
his great power to think, and that there will 
be opportunity for ranges of thought there 
that so surpass all that is conceivable to us to- 
day as to seem to us almost incredible. The 
thinker may study, investigate, and discover 



Possible Future Conditions 291 

the natural laws of the universe under condi- 
tions of which we can hardly dream to-day. 

I will give just a natural hint. Old ex-Presi- 
dent Hill, of Harvard, was one of the most 
famous mathematicians of the century. I am 
afraid I should not enjoy his company, nor he 
mine, should I find him engaged in his favourite 
occupation on the other side. But this is what 
he said. Somebody asked him, " What are 
you going to do when you enter the other 
life ? " And his reply was, " There are enough 
problems, mathematical problems, connected 
with the arc of a circle, to keep me busy and 
happy for at least a thousand years." 

That was one of the most famous mathe- 
maticians of the century. Why should the 
musician lose the enjoyment of his transcendent 
power ? Why the artist of his ? Why should 
any of the magnificent souls of the world find 
themselves without occupation ? 

And then, I believe another thing. There 
are sainted souls, men and women both, in this 
life, who would not find themselves happy if 
there were not somebody to help, somebody 
to whom they could be of service. This con- 
dition of mind is illustrated, although humor- 
ously, in the expression of the old sainted 
Calvinist deacon, who had made up his mind 



292 Life Beyond Death 

that he had committed the unpardonable sin, 
and was sure that he should go to hell. Some 
one asked him what he should do there, and 
he said he should try to start a prayer-meeting. 
The dominant wish and will of the soul, I be- 
lieve, will find scope for its inclination. 

Remember how many millions of little 
children are passing into this country every 
year. They would need nursing and care and 
teaching if they stayed here. I believe they 
will need, and will find, nursing and teaching 
and care and tenderest love over there. And 
there are thousands of men and women dying 
uneducated, undeveloped, soiled, and vicious. 
Perhaps it is not their own fault. They may 
have inherited weakness, and been brought up 
in surroundings that made virtue practically 
impossible. I believe there will be opportuni- 
ties for ministering to such as these. 

Then, sometimes, when we get very tired, 
we think that we would like a long time, at 
least before doing anything again, for rest. 
As an illustration of this state of mind, I re- 
ceived a letter from Edward Everett Hale 
during the winter of 1899, in which he said: 
" When we get to heaven and have been 
there a few seons, and had a chance to get 
rested a little and to look around us, I hope I 



Possible Future Conditions 293 

shall have an opportunity to get off with you in 
some secluded place and have a leisurely talk 
about some things that I despair of ever getting 
hold of here." 

So this leisurely rest, this thrilling, throb- 
bing occupation of love and service, this 
thirst of the discoverer, of the inventor, this 
genius of the artist, the musician, — all that is 
noblest and finest and sweetest here, I believe 
it is not at all unreasonable for us to suppose 
will find ample scope and unfolding over 
yonder. Much of it, most of it, of course, is 
guess-work now. 

We are surrounded with mystery on every 
hand ; and sometimes we get discouraged be- 
cause we cannot answer all our questionings. 
Get discouraged ! Think of it, think a little 
further, think a little deeper ; and this, which 
is your overwhelming difficulty at times, you 
will see to be the source and spring of every 
rational hope. Suppose that we could get 
through over there in a year or a thousand 
years ; suppose there were no more questions 
to be asked, nothing more to be done, no- 
where else to go. We should pray for a death 
that would stay death, from sheer ennui. 

The only rational ground for belief in the 
possibility of an immortal life is in the fact 



294 Life Beyond Death 

that we are surrounded on every hand by 
alluring mystery, and a mystery that in certain 
(senses may grow and increase as the ages go 
by. I am in a little valley. I cannot explain 
I how the grass grows or the flowers bud and 
spring. I could ask a thousand questions that 
I could not answer ; but my difficulty seems to 
me little and somewhat comprehensible. I 
climb up the mountains ; and the range in the 
mystery of the unknown grows with every step 
of ascent. 

So I believe that, as we advance, the mystery 
of the universe, and of our tender, loving 
Father, God, will increase, instead of diminish- 
ing at every step. So I can believe that the 
hope of an immortal life is a sensible hope, 
because I know that I can study and think 
and advance forever and ever and ever, and 
never approach getting through ; for there is 
no possibility of " getting through " with the 
Infinite. \ 

So let us be content with so much as must 
be mystery, not be discouraged by it, — but re- 
gard it as what it is : the ground of our noblest 
and most magnificent hope. 



APPENDIX 

SOME HINTS AS TO PERSONAL EXPERI- 
ENCES AND OPINIONS 

I WAS a boy in the town of Norridgewock, 
on the Kennebec, in Maine, when I first 
heard of what has come to be called Spiritual- 
ism. My curiosity was aroused, but not in 
any serious way. I saw table-tipping, and 
heard raps, and knew that there were some 
people in the village who believed that they 
were by these means in communication with 
the spiritual world. I saw enough at that time 
to know that some force was in action other 
than that which we ordinarily call muscular 
power, whether conscious or unconscious. A 
small table which we had in the house would 
move, and answer questions in various ways, 
for myself. I have never been able to explain 
what then occurred by any ordinary means. 
I remember that on one occasion I stood up 
and touched a table very lightly with the tips 
of my fingers, and that it followed me quite 

295 



296 Appendix 

across the room. So much for my first know- 
ledge of anything of this sort. Of course, I 
do not offer this as scientific evidence of any- 
thing. 

I had nothing more to do with the matter 
for a good many years. Indeed, all my re- 
ligious training gave me a decided prejudice 
against it. And when I was a young minister 
in California, I demolished the whole matter, 
to my own satisfaction and to the satisfaction 
of a large number of enthusiastic hearers — 
the only " out " about the affair being that the 
hearers and myself were entirely ignorant of 
the whole subject. We were correspondingly 
confident, however, as I have a good many 
times in my life found that ignorant persons 
are. 

It was not, then, until 1874 that my atten- 
tion was called to the subject again. I had 
just moved from Chicago to take the ministry 
of the Church of the Unity in Boston. One 
of my parishioners had lost her father. She 
came to me one day and said that she had 
been visiting a certain " medium," whose name 
she gave me, and that some things had been 
said which seemed to her very remarkable. 
She asked my advice, wishing to know 
whether I thought she had better pursue 



Appendix 297 

the matter further, or if I was acquainted 
with any reasons sufficient to induce her 
to drop the matter, as questionable or dan- 
gerous. I suddenly awoke to the conscious- 
ness that I had nothing better to give her 
than a prejudice. She asked for advice, and 
I was not competent to help her. I said 
frankly, " I do not know anything about it. I 
have always been prejudiced against it, I have 
preached against it ; but I have no knowledge 
on the subject whatever." And it then oc- 
curred to me that, as a minister of a congrega- 
tion, I might be expected to be able to give 
advice on so important a subject. 

I reflected that there were thousands — the 
claim reached even to millions — of persons in 
the modern world who were either believers in 
or were investigating the subject. I reflected 
also that it was either the grandest truth or 
the most lamentable delusion of the world 
which was involved. I made up my mind that 
I would take steps to have an opinion on the 
subject which was worth something, being based 
at least on somewhat of study and experience. 
Thus I might be able to guide the members 
of my congregation who came to me for advice. 

This was twenty-five years ago. Since that 
time I have been a careful and close student 



298 Appendix 

of the whole range of psychical phenomena, so 
far as time and opportunity have permitted. 
I have not felt at liberty to neglect my regular 
work for the sake of it ; but I have felt that it 
was an important part of my regular work to 
know something of such matters as these. I 
came to feel that these problems were worthy 
of the most serious study, whether they took 
us across the border-line and gave us any 
knowledge of the other life, or stopped short 
and concerned themselves only with the pow- 
ers of the mind as embodied. In either case 
they seemed to me remarkable. The dark- 
est of all Dark Africas is the brain, and the 
mind whose activities are so intimately con- 
nected with it. So I never could quite un- 
derstand why scientific men should slight or 
treat with contempt such remarkable facts as I 
knew existed, even though the spiritualistic 
claim might prove to be entirely unfounded. 

I will now give an account of certain facts 
with which I have become familiar in the range 
of my own personal experience, following in 
some general way what appears to be the 
order of their importance. I am not so sure 
of the rank which they ought to hold, how- 
ever, as some persons appear to be. But that 
does not matter. 



Appendix 299 

In the first place, then, I will note certain 
things which come under the head of physical 
phenomena. I have already touched on the 
matter of table-tipping, raps, and matters of 
that sort. My experiments in this direction 
have been many, and have been scattered over 
a good many years. I know, beyond any 
question or qualification of the statement, that 
physical objects have been moved in such a 
way as was inexplicable on the theory that 
only the muscular power of any person present 
was involved. And here let me make a state- 
ment which seems to me of the utmost import- 
ance. If so much as a hair or a grain of sand 
be moved, though it be only a fraction of an inch, 
by any power which is not "physical" in the 
scientific sense, then it seems to me that we 
have crossed the Rubicon that separates our 
ordinary life from what is called the " spiritual." 
And if this movement be under the guidance 
of intelligence, then it demands something 
more than physics to account for it. 

I have known of a party of people sit- 
ting around a table in frolicsome mood, until 
the table at last seemed animated by a force 
which they could neither guide nor control. 
I have known these same people to flee from 
the room at last in terror, shutting the door 



3oo Appendix 

behind them, while objects in different parts 
of the house, upstairs and down, were flung 
about by some force that none of the people 
present could see or comprehend. Phenomena 
like these are credibly reported as having 
taken place in the house of old Dr. Phelps, 
the father of Professor Phelps of Andover, 
and in the home of the Wesleys in England. 

A very prominent Liberal preacher of this 
country, whose name would at once be re- 
cognised as familiar to everybody if I felt at 
liberty to mention it, once told me that in the 
city of New York, in brilliant light, he and five 
or six other men sat on the top of a square 
piano which, with its human burden, was lifted 
into the air when a frail and delicate lady 
simply touched it with her fingers. This he 
testified to as a fact in his own experience, 
while at the same time he lived and died 
without any belief in a spiritualistic explana- 
tion of the fact. I refer to it simply as giving 
the testimony of somebody beside myself to 
such occurrences as these, whatever the ex- 
planation of them may be. 

Another gentleman of my acquaintance, a 
scholar, a man of wealth, who had travelled 
and had lived much abroad, looked with con- 
tempt upon all these matters until they were 



Appendix 301 

forced upon his attention through the " medi- 
umship " of his own son, a lad of thirteen or 
fourteen at the time. This man weighed at 
least two hundred pounds, and" he told me 
that a large study table, which he pointed out 
to me, — a very heavy table, containing drawers, 
— had been lifted into the air and moved in 
various ways around the room, with him sitting 
on it, while his son merely touched it with the 
tips of his fingers. 

I myself, sitting in a heavy stuffed arm- 
chair, in broad daylight, have been lifted 
several inches from the floor, and set down 
again as gently as though Hercules were 
engaged in the process, the only visible reason 
for it being that the " medium," sitting beside 
me, laid his hand gently on the back of the 
chair. This was done while a friend was 
sitting by and keeping a keen watch. I have 
on one occasion seen a chair lifted six inches 
or a foot from the floor and brought across 
the room, at my own request, and leaned up 
within an inch or two of my side against the 
table, in the position of a chair that is reserved 
for some guest at the table of a hotel ; and 
this without anyone's being within a great 
many feet of it, and in broad daylight. 

One more instance in this direction ; but 



302 Appendix 

let me say that it seems to me hardly fair to 
speak of these as purely physical phenomena, 
because the movements indicate purpose and in- 
telligent guidance, whatever may be the cause. 
An English gentleman once told me that 
he had seen an accordion played upon when 
no hand was touching the keys. At the time 
I did not believe a word of this. I did not doubt 
the honesty or the intelligence of the gentleman 
who told me ; the matter simply appeared to 
me incredible, and I thought that there must 
be some mistake. Afterwards, however, I 
became familiar with the published reports of 
experiments carried on with Home, by Pro- 
fessor (now Sir William) Crookes, one of the 
most famous scientists and chemists in the 
world. His name has become recently familiar 
to us, through the use of the Crookes tube, 
his invention, in connection with the Roentgen 
rays. Professor Crookes arranged scientific 
apparatus by which to test the question as to 
whether there was any force at work in the 
presence of Home other than conscious or un- 
conscious muscular power. He proved, beyond 
question, that there was. 

Among the experiments which he tried was 
the one to which I have referred above, of the 
playing on an accordion. He testifies that the 



Appendix 3°3 

accordion was placed in a wicker basket (per- 
haps a common scrap-basket) under the table, 
and beyond the reach of anyone, and that 
while so placed tunes were played upon it 
without any visible touch. At last I had an 
experience of my own, which demonstrated 
that this was not only possible, but true. I 
was sitting with a "medium" one morning 
about ten o'clock, while the sun streamed into 
the room through large and numerous win- 
dows, so that there was no darkness or con- 
cealment. An accordion lay on the table. I 
took it up, slid the movable side out, held it 
up to the light, and examined it in every par- 
ticular, to see that it was a simple, plain ac- 
cordion. Then the " medium " took it in one 
hand, holding it by the side opposite to that 
on which the keys were arranged, and while it 
was within three or four feet of my face and 
in plain view, it played tune after tune, the 
accordion being pulled out and pushed in as 
though held by a hand on the other side. I 
then said, " Won't they play for me ? " — assum- 
ing the existence of invisible intelligences who 
had been producing the music. His answer 
was, " I don't know ; you can try if you wish." 
Thereupon I took the accordion and held it as 
he had done. No tune was played ; but I had 



304 Appendix 

an experience which was even more conclusive 
as to the existence of some force which I could 
not comprehend than as if I had heard the music 
repeated. Something, some power, or some- 
body — I leave it to the reader to decide — 
seized the accordion, and I found myself en- 
gaged in a struggle which required all the 
muscular power I possessed to enable me to 
keep possession of the instrument without its 
being torn to pieces. It was as real a struggle 
as though a visible man had been attempting 
to take it away from me. I do not assume to 
say what was at work while I held the ac- 
cordion ; but I raise the question as to whether 
anything besides intelligence plays tunes. 

Perhaps these are sufficient as specimens of 
what are ordinarily called physical phenomena. 
I could give dozens of others, but it is not 
necessary. 

The time will doubtless come when this 
class of facts will be tested by a series of sci- 
entific experiments and their value be de- 
termined. Meantime I mention this only as 
part of my story. 

Now I wish to say a word or two in regard 
to the matter of raps. And let me say here, 
in general, that I may repeat certain things 
that I have spoken of in my little book called 



Appendix 305 

Psychics, Facts, and Theories, or that I have 
mentioned in the course of some of the chap- 
ters in this present book. Sometimes repeti- 
tion plays the needed part of emphasis. 

I was once passing through the city of New- 
York (this was a good many years ago), when 
I called, one morning, with a note of introduc- 
tion, on a lady who was widely known as a 
psychic. We were utter strangers to each 
other, except for the brief note of introduction 
which I had presented. She invited me into 
the back parlour, which was separated from the 
front by sliding doors. As we sat and con- 
versed, I began to hear raps in various parts 
of the room. As some carpenters were at 
work on the conservatory, which was an ex- 
tension of the back parlour, making more or 
less noise, she suggested that we adjourn to 
the front parlour, which would be a little more 
quiet. This we did, she sitting down in a 
rocking-chair, while I sat in another, some ten 
feet away. The raps again began ; — so far as 
my senses reported, they were on the floor, on 
the table, on the walls in different parts of the 
room. Some wise men have said (I have re- 
cently read it again in a newspaper) that these 
raps were produced by some unusual manipu- 
lation of the toe-joints. I do not care to take 



306 Appendix 

the trouble to deny this ; but I would like to 
raise the question as to how it happened that 
her toe-joints were able to tell me a large num- 
ber of things that the owner of the said joints 
could never by any possibility have known. 
For, in answer to my questions, the raps did 
answer questions and tell things which indeed 
I knew, but which I am perfectly certain that 
she did not know. 

This has been the trouble always, to my 
mind, in explaining the matter of these raps. 
That they exist, everybody who has cared to 
investigate the matter knows. And I know, 
if everybody else who has written on the 
subject does not, that they indicate and express 
intelligence. Whether it is the intelligence of 
the sitters, or of some spirit power in another 
world, I am not prepared now to decide. 

I will pass now to certain things which are 
generally regarded as belonging to a higher 
grade of these phenomena. It is thought by 
many that hypnotism is in some way connected 
with these experiences, so I may give it a pass- 
ing word. When Mesmer first created a popu- 
lar excitement in France, a great scientific 
commission was appointed to investigate the 
matter. It was done, to the satisfaction of the 
commission ; and the decision was reached that 



Appendix 3°7 

the whole thing was fraud or illusion. To-day- 
there is not a sensible scientific man in the 
world who does not know that even more 
wonderful things than Mesmer discovered are 
true, while doctors are using this mysterious 
power in the treatment and cure of disease. I 
have known cases where a person in the hyp- 
notic condition was clairvoyant, though he did 
not possess the power in his ordinary state. 
This would seem to indicate that there may be 
some connection between these different forms 
of sensitiveness. 

Clairvoyance and clairaudience exist, beyond 
question. I do not mean by this to endorse 
all the people who advertise themselves as 
possessing these powers and as undertaking to 
find lost objects or to give business advice to 
the credulous. I simply mean to state that 
there are such powers. Of course, I do not 
claim that they necessarily take us across the 
border-line of the present life. 

The next point that this brings us to deal 
with is what is called telepathy or mind-read- 
ing. I believe that the experiments of the 
Society for Psychical Research have estab- 
lished, beyond any reasonable doubt, the fact 
that a power like this does exist. I have known 
cases, within the range of my own personal 



308 Appendix 

experience, and I have learned that distance 
has very little to do with them. Such mental 
communication can take place between Eng- 
land and India, between the Indian Ocean and 
the city of New York, or between widely sep- 
arated States in our own country. I make 
these special allusions as indicating cases with 
which I am familiar. 

I have myself been inclined to believe that 
these may be explained by physical means — 
that is, apart from the thought side, which I do 
not regard as physical. The communication 
may be by means of wave motions in the ether 
between brains which are, so to speak, attuned 
to each other, just as it is known that musical 
instruments will sometimes respond when they 
are pitched to the same key. I do not dogma- 
tise in this matter : it is enough for my purpose 
simply to call attention to the fact that such 
things do exist. 

Next, I will barely suggest the subject of 
ghosts or apparitions. I think there is no sort 
of question that there are such things as ghosts. 
What they are, or how they are produced — 
whether they are the real appearances of per- 
sons who have become inhabitants of what we 
are accustomed to call the spirit world, I do 
not always feel sure. A telepathic origin for 



Appendix 3°9 

some of them has been suggested, and in some 
cases perhaps with reason. But I have known 
cases where a friend, who was living at a dis- 
tance, has appeared very soon after the fact of 
death, to someone in another town or another 
State. I have myself personally investigated 
and satisfied myself of the truth of happenings 
of this sort. 

In this connection it may be worth while to 
speak of the visions of the dying. It is well 
known, of course, that persons suffering from 
fever and different kinds of illness have visions 
which are probably caused by the disease, and 
so are purely subjective. It is held by many 
that all visions of the dying are of this order. 
Dr. Clarke, a famous Boston physician, pub- 
lished some years ago a small volume en- 
titled Vision. It contained an introduction 
by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Both Dr. Clarke 
and Dr. Holmes were inclined to think that 
the ordinary visions of the dying are of the 
subjective sort ; but both of them intimated 
that they had known certain cases where there 
was at least room for serious doubt as to 
whether the eyes of the dying were not looking 
upon some objective fact. 

A good many cases have come under my 
personal observation. Most of them were not 



3io Appendix 

of a nature to prove that the dying person 
actually saw the friends whose names he called, 
or whose faces and forms seemed to him to be 
present. But I have known one or two cases 
that seemed to me to possess very remarkable 
features in the direction of proof. I will simply 
give one of them as a specimen. 

There were two little girls, about eight or 
nine years of age, who lived in a city of Mas- 
sachusetts. They were not relatives, but were 
very close personal friends. Both were taken 
ill at the same time with diphtheria. One, 
whose name I will speak of as Jennie, died on 
Wednesday. The family, the nurses, and the 
physicians all took special pains to keep the 
fact from her playmate, fearing that the effect 
of it might stand in the way of her recovery. 
It proved that they were successful in their 
efforts ; for on Saturday morning, not long be- 
fore the death of the other child, she went 
through the form of making her little will. 
She spoke of certain things that she wished 
to give to different ones among her brothers 
and sisters and playmates. Among these she 
pointed out certain things of which she was very 
fond, that were to go to Jennie — thus settling 
all possible question as to whether or no she 
had found out that Jennie was not still living. 



Appendix 3 11 

A little later she seemed to be between the 
two worlds, seeing the friends that were about 
the bed, and also seeing those who are ordin- 
arily invisible. She spoke of her grandfather 
and grandmother, and of others, expressing 
her delight to see them. And then she turned 
to her father, with face and voice both ex- 
pressing the greatest surprise, and exclaimed, 
" Why, Papa, why did n't you tell me that 
Jennie had gone? Jennie is here with the 
rest ! Why did n't you tell me of it ? " This 
seems to be a case a little out of the ordinary. 
If she had known that her friend was among 
the dead, we might say with some reason that 
she was merely imagining that she saw her 
face among others that she believed had long 
been inhabitants of the other world. But her 
surprise at seeing this particular face carries 
with it the suggestion of reality, such as does 
not attach itself to the ordinary cases. 

I know also of a case of a little boy, but two 
or three years old, who had been put to bed 
and was asleep. He had a friend, a Judge of 
some prominence, living in the place, who, 
having no children of his own, was very fond 
of this particular little boy, — used to come often 
to see him, bring him presents, and make a 
pet of him. On this evening the father and 



3 1 2 Appendix 

mother were sitting in the next room, when 
they heard the little boy crying violently, as 
though suddenly aroused from his sleep. They 
went in and found him sobbing as though 
his heart would break. They asked him what 

the matter was, and he called out, " Judge 

says he 's dead ! He has been here and told 
me that he is dead ! " The next morning it 
was found that the Judge had died at about 
that time the night before. 

It is worthy of note that these cases seem to 
have an evidential quality when connected 
with little children that they do not possess in 
the cases of grown people. The grown folks, 
it is presumed, have thought of these matters, 
as children have not, and have come to pos- 
sess certain theories, ideas, and prepossessions 
in regard to them, which might produce or de- 
termine the nature of the visions. 

I come now to consider such cases as Spirit- 
ualists are accustomed to consider communi- 
cation direct from the other life. I have said 
and published a number of times that I am 
not a Spiritualist. I will take the trouble 
of saying it, and emphasising the matter, 
once more, because in spite of my previous as- 
sertions I find myself constantly represented 
by the daily papers as being one. Indeed, 



Appendix 313 

one of the papers, last winter, curiously enough, 
had it in big headlines that I was a thorough 
believer, while ten lines below, in the report of 
what I had said, was the explicit statement 
that I was not. While the newspapers herald 
their news in this fashion, it is no wonder that 
people occasionally get misrepresented. I say 
I am not a Spiritualist, not because I am afraid 
of any name, or would shun any stigma that 
might attach to a particular association ; but 
the word " Spiritualist," as ordinarily used, 
covers so many things which I do not believe, 
so many methods with which I am not only 
not in sympathy but to which I am strongly 
opposed, carries with its popular significance 
so much unreasoning credulity, the general 
movement so opposes itself to any scientific in- 
vestigation, has covered and defended so many 
proven frauds, that I should misrepresent my 
position if I were willing to be known by the 
name. At the same time I am perfectly will- 
ing to say that I believe that there is a great 
truth at the heart of the Spiritualistic move- 
ment. And among the worst enemies of this 
truth, among those who stand most in the way 
of its rational acceptance by sensible people, 
are certain classes of Spiritualists themselves. 
I must not go into this matter too much in 



3^4 Appendix 

detail. I have received through psychics, over 
and over and over again, communications which 
I know, beyond question, did not come from 
the minds of the psychics themselves. That is, 
they were things with which, in the nature of 
the case, they could not possibly have been 
familiar. I do not deny that some of these 
may reasonably be credited to mind-reading or 
telepathy. In some way, although I know not 
how, they may have gotten hold of these facts 
hidden in the recesses of my own mind. It is 
a little curious to me, however, to note how 
glibly people will fly to mind-reading or tele- 
pathy to explain facts for which they are not 
willing to concede an explanation which as- 
sumes communication from the other side. 
And yet telepathy is as mysterious as the other 
theory, and as little known. / 

And let me say right here that it has always 
seemed to me a little strange to see people 
fighting so hard against accepting any evidence 
of the existence of their friends in another life, 
while at the same time they claim to believe 
that they do exist. I have had, as I said, hund- 
reds of communications, stating facts which 
the psychic could not possibly have known. I 
have always said in regard to these that while 
immensely interesting, and while they might 



Appendix 315 

possibly come from beyond the border, they 
were not that which I was seeking — cases 
which demonstrated the existence of invisible 
intelligences beyond those of the people who 
were sitting at the time in the room. 

One method of claimed communication is 
that which is called " independent writing," 
either on paper or upon slates. I have experi- 
mented a great many times in this direction. 
I believe that nearly all that which is called 
slate-writing is fraud, and that most "slate- 
writing mediums " had better be severely let 
alone. But I have known a few cases which, 
with all the study I have been able to give to 
them, I have not been able to explain as fraud- 
ulent. I have not treated the matter care- 
lessly, for in the course of my investigation I 
have discovered and exposed several fraudu- 
lent " mediums " of this class. But once in my 
life I obtained writing on my own slate, hold- 
ing it in my own hands, without the psychic's 
having touched it or having had anything to 
do with it whatsoever. I simply state this as a 
fact, and leave people to explain it if they can. 

I will mention one other strange case of 
slate-writing, which was told me by a friend in 
whom I have the utmost confidence. And 
this confidence perhaps others will share with 



316 Appendix 

me the more readily when I tell them that he 
was and is now an utter unbeliever in any com- 
munications from the other world ; indeed, he 
does not believe in any other world, and says 
that he does not want to. He is a Jewish 
rabbi. He told me that he went to a slate- 
writing " medium " in Chicago — the account 
of this he gave me immediately after his return. 
He said that he wrote a brief note to his father, 
who had died years before in Germany. He 
wrote the note in German, spelling it out with 
Hebrew characters. This he did to preclude 
the possibility of the " medium's " knowing 
what it was, even if she had some surreptitious 
way of reading it. He said that he then placed 
this note between two slates of his own, tied 
them together, and at the direction of the 
psychic hung them on the chandelier over the 
table where they were sitting. After a little 
time he was directed to take them down and 
open them. On the inside he found, written 
on the slate, a reply to his note, signed by his 
father's name, and written in precisely the 
same way in which he had written his own 
— that is, in the German language, but spelled 
with Hebrew characters. 

I have had a good deal of experience with 
what is called automatic writing. In most of 



Appendix 317 

these cases I have been told of things which I 
knew beforehand. In a few, the things com- 
municated to me I did not know, and it was 
not possible that the psychic should have 
known. 

A young man in a city not more than twenty 
miles from Boston, a clerk in a manufactory, 
wrote me that he found himself seized with 
this impulse to write, that he did not under- 
stand it, and that he wished to come and talk 
it over with me. I set a day and hour for his 
visit. He sat in my study in the church (this 
was when I was living in Boston), my house 
being perhaps three quarters of a mile away. 
I had never seen the young man before, and 
he was entirely unknown to any of my family. 
He sat down, and his hand began to write. 
The communications were signed by the name 
of a man who claimed to have lived and died 
in the city of Philadelphia. I asked him cer- 
tain questions about himself, and as far as I 
was able to carry out my inquiry the answers 
he made were correct. It occurred to me then 
to try a little test. I said, speaking to the 
supposed invisible communicator, " Would it 
be possible for you to go anywhere in the city, 
while I am sitting here, and find out some fact, 
and come back and tell me about it ? " The 



318 Appendix 

answer was that he had never tried to do such 
a thing, but he saw no reason why he should 
not, and he would try anything I might sug- 
gest. I asked him then if he would be kind 
enough to go over to my house, find out where 
Mrs. Savage was and what she was doing, and 
come back and let me know. When I had left 
for my study in the morning, she had told me 
that she expected to be away from the house 
during the forenoon, but would be back in 
time for lunch. I mention this because on the 
theory of auto-suggestion or telepathy it is 
frequently said that when you sit with a psy- 
chic you get what you are expecting for an 
answer. I pulled my watch out and waited, 
between three and four minutes, in perfect 
silence. At the end of that time the hand 
began to write again, and, entirely contrary to 
my expectation, I was informed that Mrs. 
Savage was at home, and that when the intel- 
ligence, writing, was there, she was standing in 
the front hall, saying good-bye to a caller. 
When I got home I asked her if she had been 
out, as she expected. She answered, with a 
good deal of disgust, that she had not ; that 
she had been flooded with people who had 
called on her for one reason or another all 
the morning, and had not been able to get a 



Appendix 319 

minute for the things she had intended to do. 
Then I said, " Where were you at half-past 
eleven ? " — just the time when this communica- 
tion was made to me. She thought a minute, 
and then, with a look of annoyance on her 
face, said, " Indeed, I know where I was then. 
A woman on some mission from the South had 
been here for a long while, until I was bored 
and tired to death, and at half-past eleven I was 
standing in the hall and wishing that she 
would go." This she said she was sure of 
because she happened to glance at the clock 
on the parlor mantel while she was standing 
there, and saw the hands pointing^t6 that 
hour. ' 

One more instance I will give, again a little 
one, for which I can find no ordinary explana- 
tion. I have a friend, a widow, living on 
Massachusetts Avenue in Boston. She has an 
intimate friend living on Beacon Street at the 
Back Bay. This friend at the Back Bay, 
though nobody but a few intimates were fa- 
miliar with it, was sensitive to psychic influences, 
and used to get, or think that she got, com- 
munications from the father of her friend on 
Massachusetts Avenue. The incident that oc- 
curred was this : the Massachusetts Avenue 
lady received a letter from her friend in Beacon 



320 Appendix 

Street, asking her to come over and dine with 
her on the following Monday. This was in 
the middle of the previous week. When my 
friend received the letter she said to herself, 
" I cannot accept this invitation to dinner, be- 
cause I am already engaged for that evening." 
She was accustomed to be an early riser, and 
to write her letters before breakfast and hand 
them to the carrier when he delivered the mail 
about eight o'clock in the morning, so as to 
save herself the trouble of going out. The 
next morning, waking early, she was thinking 
that she must get up and reply to this letter, 
when the thought came into her mind, " Now 
if father does really communicate with her, 
why cannot he tell her that I am engaged next 
Monday night?" And she said it seemed to 
her that if he would do so it would be a pretty 
good test of the reality of the claim. She got 
up and wrote the letter and gave it to the 
carrier to be put into the mail. Familiar as I 
was for years with the times of the delivery of 
mails in Boston, I know that this letter could 
not have reached the friend in Beacon Street 
earlier than noon, and judged by my own ex- 
perience the chances were that it would not 
reach her before the three-o'clock delivery in 
the afternoon. But (and now comes the strange 



Appendix 321 

thing about it) at half-past ten, or earlier than 
that, the coachman of the Beacon Street lady 
appeared in Massachusetts Avenue with a note 
saying, " You need not take the trouble to 
answer my letter of yesterday, because your 
father has been here and has told me you can- 
not come to dinner Monday night." 

Now, for one or two cases of personal ex- 
perience. I carried on for a long time a series 
of sittings in my study in Boston, the psychic 
in the case being one of my parishioners, a 
friend whom I had known for years. She 
never sat for money, and could not have been 
induced to sit with a stranger under any con- 
ditions. Sitting in this way, I was told over 
and over and over again things with which 
my friend could by no possibility have been 
acquainted. The communications were of 
various kinds, most of them, however, being 
through automatic writing. Her hand would 
write, while we were sitting and talking about 
some subject entirely foreign to that with 
which the hand was engaged, and while she 
was apparently in a perfectly normal condition. 

One day there claimed to be present a friend 
of mine who had lived and died in the State of 
Maine, and whom I had intimately known in 
my youth, but whom I had seen only rarely in 



322 Appendix 

later years. She had been dead about five or 
six months at this time. I was not thinking 
of her as I was sitting on this particular morn- 
ing, when suddenly the hand began to write, 
and two pages of note paper were covered, 
addressed to me, but not signed. I took it up 
and read it, thinking to myself that if such a 
thing were possible I would take my oath that 
this was a note from the friend referred to 
above. And let me say here that the friend 
who was acting as psychic not only was not ac- 
quainted with the friend who had died, but 
had never known that any such person had 
ever existed in the universe. After reading 
the note I said, " Will not whoever has writ- 
ten this note be kind enough to give me the 
name ? " — and at once the name was written, 
maiden name and married name. Then we 
began a conversation which lasted an hour, as 
natural and intelligible as conversation between 
any two friends could be. I asked questions 
about her family, her children, and her sisters ; 
asked her if she remembered books that we 
used to read together years and years ago, be- 
fore either of us was married, and she gave me 
the names of them. I asked her if she remem- 
bered one particular poem of which we were 
both very fond, and she gave the name of that. 



Appendix 3 2 3 

And so the conversation went on. But I put 
this all aside, as lacking in sufficiency of proof ; 
for I said to myself, " I know all these things ; 
nothing has been told me which was new to me ; 
and I have been wishing that I might be told 
things which I did not know." These I was 
always looking for. 

A week later (for we were holding these sit- 
tings once a week) she claimed to be present 
again, when I asked of her a similar test to 
one referred to above. I asked her if she 
could go or send to the State of Maine and 
find out where her sister was and what she 
was doing, while we were sitting there. She 
said she would try. In less than fifteen min- 
utes, after a perfect silence, the hand of the 
psychic began to write, and I was informed as 
to where the sister was and what she was do- 
ing. This again was entirely contrary to my 
expectations, because there were reasons which 
would have led me to suppose that on this par- 
ticular day this sister, whom I had known for 
years but very rarely saw, was in another town. 
I wrote to her, and found out by return mail 
that the news given me in my study in Boston 
was precisely correct. 

The next week a still more strange and 
startling thing occurred. I had known the 



324 Appendix 

sister referred to ever since I was fifteen or 
sixteen years of age. I knew she was married 
and living in Maine. I had not seen her for 
years ; I do not know that I had ever seen her 
husband. I had no reason to suppose that 
they were not living together in perfect accord 
and happiness. Suddenly on the third morn- 
ing, my friend began to speak about her sister. 
She said, " She is exceedingly unhappy, is 
passing through the greatest sorrow of her 
life. I wish I could make her know that I 
care. I wish you would write to her for me." 
I asked what the matter was, for I knew abso- 
lutely nothing about the situation of affairs. 
There was a distinct hesitancy, as though she 
did not quite know whether to speak of the 
situation before a third person — that, at any 
rate was the impression made on my mind. 
At last, however, as though seeing no other 
way, she told me that the cause was the infi- 
delity and cruelty of the sister's husband. All 
this was an utter surprise to me ; and again let 
me repeat that the psychic, before these sit- 
tings began, did not know that there were any 
such people in the world. I asked her to tell 
me what she wished to about the matter, 
which she did. I then sat down and wrote a 
letter to the sister, asking her if she was in any 



Appendix 325 

special trouble, and if so, and the nature of it 
was such that she could, if she would tell me 
about it. I received by return mail a letter 
marked " Private and Confidential," in which 
every syllable that had been told me was con- 
firmed as true ; and I was begged, the minute 
I had read the letter, to burn it, because, as 
she said, if her husband knew she had written 
any such letter he would kill her. 

These last, as well as some of the others 
above referred to, are specimens of cases which 
I am not able to explain on any of the theories 
which have been advocated which fall short of 
communication from some invisible intelligence. 
I do not hold my opinions in any dogmatic 
fashion. I am ready to revise or surrender 
any one of my present beliefs if some adequate 
reason can be given me for so doing. But 
none of the explanations which have ever been 
offered to me — and I have read almost every- 
thing that I could get which has been written 
in this direction — have seemed to me ade- 
quate. It certainly was not fraud. It certainly 
was not auto-suggestion on the part of either 
of us, for both of us were in absolute ignorance 
of the facts. It does not seem to me that tel- 
epathy can explain it, for the conditions which 
accompany telepathy were entirely absent. I 



326 Appendix 

cannot yet accept the theory — supported by 
some — that the psychic unconsciously dips the 
bewildering variety of unknown facts out of 
the limitless ocean of the universal mind. And 
I confess that I can see no reasonable explana- 
tion excepting the supposition that my dead 
friend was there and actually told me these 
things. When somebody can give me an ade- 
quate explanation of the facts in some other di- 
rection, I shall be ready to consider and adopt 
it if the evidence seems to point that way. 

I give these cases because they are outside 
of those which have been published in connec- 
tion with the investigations of the Society for 
Psychical Research. I was a corporate mem- 
ber of that society, and have been in sympathy 
with it and working with it since it was first 
organised. But while I have been working as 
a member of that society, and sometimes as 
connected with some of its committees, I have 
always been carrying on quiet private investi- 
gations on my own account ; and I have given 
here some specimens of such things as I have 
found. 

I know, as well as I know my existence, 
that the things I have here set down are true. 
I have discovered in the last twenty-five years 
no end of fraud. I have discovered any 



Appendix 327 

amount of delusion and self-deception. I have 
found people claiming to be "mediums" who 
have had some strange experiences, but who, 
as it seems to me, did not need to go outside 
this world for an explanation of them. I have 
attended any number of " dark seances," but 
have never used anything which occurred in 
them as evidence, not because a good many of 
the things may not have been true, but because 
even the honest investigator is so liable to be 
deceived in regard to things which take place 
under such conditions. I have put aside al- 
ways anything, however strange it may have 
seemed to me, of which I was not absolutely 
sure, and of which I did not make a record at 
the time. I have attended a good many so- 
called " materialising seances," but there has 
always been something the matter with them. 
I have never been able to be certain as to what 
was going on ; and consequently I have never 
counted them as testimony. Indeed, I am in- 
clined to think that all of them are fraudulent. 
Let me add one thing more, for the sake of 
explaining my personal attitude and the method 
I follow. I have never, with one exception, 
attempted to get any communication from any 
particular friend or person. I have been gov- 
erned by no prurient curiosity or love for the 



J 



28 Appendix 



mystic or marvellous. I have simply been en- 
gaged in trying to find out whether certain al- 
leged things were true, and, if they were true, 
what their bearing might be on the nature of 
man and the possibility of continued existence. 
In these inquiries I have followed the most 
rigid scientific method. I have kept nothing 
which was doubtful, nothing which I have not 
seen and known and demonstrated to be true. 

As the result of my study, I cannot help 
feeling that we are on the eve of discovering 
the Other Country, as really as Columbus dis- 
covered America. Of course, I shall be glad, 
as countless thousands and millions of other 
people will be, if this shall prove to be so. I 
confess that I am inclined to agree with Dr. 
Hodgson, the Secretary of the Society for 
Psychical Research ; with Mr. Frederic W. H. 
Myers, the great essayist in England ; with 
Professor Lodge, the physicist and mathema- 
tician of the old British Association ; and with 
a great many others who have carefully studied 
the matter, that continued existence, and at 
least occasional communication, are already 
demonstrated. 

I submit at any rate that, as Mr. Gladstone 
says, and as a good many others have said a 
hundred times before he said it (I mention 



Appendix 329 

him because great names do count with people) 
that this is the most important subject of study 
in the world. It ought to be settled, one way 
or the other — settled beyond dispute, And I, 
for one, am ready to say that I will bow my 
head loyally to any competent settlement, what- 
ever it may be. If, when I get through with 
this life, that is the end of me, I would rather 
know it now, and adjust my life to facts, rather 
than to imaginary conditions. If it shall be 
proved true, as I hope it may, that we continue 
to exist, and, in accordance with the facts of 
evolution, to advance toward ever higher and 
nobler conditions, I shall be glad to have done 
ever so little in helping to establish this mag- 
nificent and inspiring truth. 



INDEX 



Accordion, played by in-visible 
agency, 302-304 

Agnosticism, a product of scien- 
tific thought, 165 ; definition 
of the word, 170-172 ; false, 
173 ; real, I73-I75 ; preva- 
lence of, to-day, 176 

Agnostics, real truth-seekers, 173 
-175 ; often the noblest men, 
176 

Ahriman, the principle of dark- 
ness and evil in Persian theol- 
ogy, 34 

Aldrich, on Bayard Taylor's 
death, 183 

Apparitions, of the dead, cases 
personally known to author, 
308-312 

Arguments, usual, in favour of 
future life, deceptive, 230 

Author not a Spiritualist, 312- 
313 ; earnest, scientific investi- 
gator, 326 ff. 

Automatic writing, author's ex- 
periences with, 316-319, 321— 
325 ; case of, reported by au- 
thor's friend, 319-321 ; author 
unable to explain, 325 ; except 
on the ground of communica- 
tion from the dead, 326 

Auto-suggestion, theory of, 318— 

325 
Awakening, author's first, to 
the importance of studying 
spiritualistic phenomena, 296- 
298 



Belief in future life, of primitive 
men, 9-18 ; of ancient Egyp- 
tians, 22, 25 ; of Scandinavians, 
22 ; of Indians, 23 ; of Per- 
sians, ib. ; of Greeks and Ro- 
mans, 23-28, 31-32 ; of the 
majority of men, not evidence, 
not proof, 228^". ; never scien- 
tifically investigated till 1882, 
248/: 

Body, is man only a? 213^". 

Brahma, absorption in, final aim 
of Brahmins' wishes, 30 

Brahmins, their horror of rein- 
carnation, 29, 30 

Browning, on immortality, 182- 
183 

Buddhists, their horror of rein- 
carnation, 29, 30 

Church, the, stops intellectual 
advance, 161 ; spiritual tyr- 
anny of, in the Middle Ages, 
161-163 ; the Renaissance a 
reaction against, 163 ff. ; her 
abuse of the word "faith," 
ibbff. ; attitude of, towards the 
Spiritualist movement, 187- 
188 ; only spiritual power in 
the Middle Ages, 214 ; hostile 
to scientific inquiry, 245^ 

Clairvoyance and clairaudience 
established beyond question, 

307 
Clarke, Dr. , of Boston, on visions 
of the dying, 309 



331 



33* 



Index 



Communications, with the dead 
possible, 265 ff. ; inexplicable, 
save through psychics, 314-326; 
from the dead only probable 
explanation of certain facts, 
326 ; demonstrated in the 
opinion of many eminent men, 
328 

Copernicus, his theory of the uni- 
verse known to Milton, 135- 
136 

Dante, his great poem constructed 
on the Ptolemaic theory of the 
universe and on mediseval theo- 
logy, 113-124 ; general impres- 
sion it leaves on the average 
reader, 125-132 

Dead, the, are they alive? 265 
ff. ; communication with, possi- 
ble, ib. ; apparitions of, 308- 
312; communication from, 
only possible explanation of 
certain facts, 326 

Death, is it the end or a new be- 
ginning? 2 ; importance of the 
question, 2-6 ; ideas of primi- 
tive men on, 8-18 ; of later 
races, 32—35 ; looked upon as 
a calamity, 65 ; desired by 
Paul and Socrates, 63, 66-67 ; 
conquered by Christ, 78, 85^"., 
88 ; denied by advanced psy- 
chics, 265 ff. ; not painful, 
271 ; not a violent change, 272 

Doubt pervades the Church and 
the world, 202—210 

Easter, Christian, its significance, 

178 ; the same as that claimed 

for Spiritualism, 179 
Egyptians, ancient, their ideas 

of the soul's course after death, 

22 ; of a dual soul, 25 
Elysium, the place for the good 

in the underworld of the Greeks 

and Romans, 35 
Essenes, Hebrew Platonists, 60 
Experiences, author's personal, 

295 ff. (Appendix) ; first, with 



raps and table-tipping, 295 : 
with furniture, 301 ; with ac- 
cordion, 302-304 ; later, with 
raps, 305-306 ; with telepathy, 
307-308 ; apparitions of the 
dead, 308-312 ; with visions 
of the dying, 3 10-3 11 ; with 
inexplicable communications 
through psychics, 314-326 ; 
with slate-writing, 315 ; with 
automatic writing, 316-319, 
321-326 ; with frauds, 326- 
327 

Faith, abuse of the word by the 
Church, ibbff. ; Paul's defini- 
tion of, 167 ; true meaning of, 
168, 169 ; not evidence, not 
proof, 228 

Friends, our, in the spirit world, 
probably near us, 281 ff. ; in- 
terfere only occasionally, 284- 
287 ; probably ministering 
spirits, 284, 291-292 

Gautama (Buddha), 30 

Gehenna, the place of punish- 
ment in Sheoi or the under- 
world, 58-59. 72, 95~9° 

Ghosts, see Apparitions 

Gladstone, on the work of the 
Society for Psychical Research, 
253-254 ; on the all-import- 
ance of the study of psychical 
phenomena, 254 

Greek philosophy, scientific ten- 
dency of, 160 ; revival of, 163 

/• 
Greeks and Romans, their ideas 
of future life, 23-26, 31-32 ; 
on death, 35 

Hades, the Greek name for the 
underworld, hell, sheol, 58 

Heathens, all consigned to hell 
by the churches, 146-148 

Heaven, in the Old Testament, 
45-46 ; difficulty of locating, 
142-145 ; who is to go to, 149 ; 
unsatisfactory pictures of life 
in, 150/: 



Index 



333 



Hebrews, originally nature-wor- 
shippers, 52 ; take little 
thought of a future life at first, 
53 ; originate the idea of resur- 
rection, 56-57 ; their moral 
evolution, 58-62 

" Hell," in the Old Testament, 
47-52 {see Sheol), 55, 56 ; in 
Dante's poem, 121-123 ; end- 
lessness of, first taught by 
Christianity, 126 ; difficulty of 
locating, 142-145 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, on im- 
mortality, 134 ; on visions of 
the dying, 309 

Home, the Spiritualist medium, 
experiments with, 302 

Huxley, created the names "ag- 
nostic" and "agnosticism," 
170 ; on materialism, 237 

Hydesville, N. Y., birthplace of 
modern Spiritualism, 185 

Hypnotism, the modern name 
for Mesmerism, 256 

Immortality, belief in, inborn in 
man, 10 ff. ; universal among 
great civilised races, 20 ff. ; 
yet said to have been first 
brought to light by Christ, 88- 
89 

Indians believe in heavens and 
hells, 23 

Jesus, his opinions difficult to 
ascertain, easy to misrepre- 
sent, 89-93 ; his reticence on 
several important questions, 
93^. ; his teaching of the 
kingdom of heaven and of 
eternal life not dogmatic, but 
entirely human, 102-106 

Job, Book of, its ethical charac- 
ter, 54 

Life, future, ideas of primitive 
men on, 8-18 ; of ancient 
Egyptians, 22, 25 ; of Scandi- 
navians, 22 ; of Indians, 23 ; 
of Persians, ib, ; of Greeks 



and Romans, 23-28, 31-32 ; 
has no part in the Mosaic tra- 
dition, 43 ff. ; as vaguely im- 
agined by the Hebrews, 44 
~57 ; vaguely indicated by 
Jesus, 97 ff. ; belief in, exag- 
gerated, 180 ; attitude of poets 
towards belief in, 181-185 ; 
proofs of, passionately desired, 
220^". ; probabilities in favour 
of, 224^". 
Livermore, Mrs. Mary A. ; her 
experience with a warning 
" voice," 285 
Longfellow, on death, 182 
Lucifer, his rebellion, 69, 117 

Man, beginnings of, 241 ; evolu- 
tion of, 242, 243 

Materialism, dangers of, 217^". ; 
growth of, 237 ; decay and 
death of, among scientific men, 
237-238 

Mediums, foolish to consult 
them, 196/. ; necessary agents 
of transmission, like telegraph 
wires, 282-284 ; slate-writing, 
frequently frauds, 315 

Mesmer, 256 ; his discoveries, 
ridiculed by contemporary sci- 
entists, proved true by later 
science, 306-307 

Messages, spiritualistic, vary in 
character and value, 195-198 

Middle Ages, the, a time of 
spiritual darkness and horror, 
in ; theory of the universe in, 
112— 114 ; embodied in Dante's 
poem, 114, 124; characteris- 
tic beliefs of, 157-160 ; their 
supposed knowledge of the 
other world, 158-160; their 
ignorance of this world, ib. ; 
tyrannised by the Church, 161 
-163 

Milton, acquainted with the Co- 
pernican system, but clings to 
the Ptolemaic, 135-136 ; theo- 
logical framework of his epic, 
137-138 



334 



Index 



Mind-reading, a fact personally 
known to author, 307, 308 ; 
insufficient to account for cer- 
tain facts, 314 

Moses, his Egyptian education, 
42 ; leaves out of his legisla- 
tion the Egyptian teaching of 
a future life, 42 ff. 

Mystery surrounding us an in- 
centive and hope, not a reason 
for discouragement, 293, 294 

Nirvana, object of Buddha's de- 
sire, 30 
Norsemen, see Scandinavians 

Old Testament, vague on the 
subject of future life, 43-52 ; 
attaches no idea of reward and 
punishment to it, 54 

Other country, the, discovery of, 
imminent, 328; existence of, al- 
ready demonstrated in the opin- 
ion of many eminent men, ib. 

Paradise, the place of reward in 
sheol, or the underworld, 58, 
59, 72, 95, 96 ; in Dante's 
poem, 124, 130 

Parker, Theodore, at Thoreau's 
deathbed, 1 ; his consciousness 
of immortality, 227 ; his argu- 
ment from the misery of the 
present life, 230 

Paul, prefers death to life, 63, 
68 ; his scheme of the world 
and the universe and his belief 
in the Messiah before his con- 
version, 69-73 ; his change of 
faith, 73 ; his doctrine of 
Christ's second advent, 74-77 ; 
of resurrection, 77-80 ; of uni- 
versal salvation, 82, 83 ; his 
unworldliness (Christian stoic- 
ism), _ 83-85 ; referred to as 
traditional author of Hebrews, 
though real author not known, 
167 ; commends spirit of in- 
quiry, 245 

Persians, ancient, believe in 
heavens and hells, 23 ; their 



theology based on duality — 
good and evil, 34 

Pharisees, the Hebrew majority 
at the time of Christ, believ- 
ing in immortality and hosts 
of spirits, good and evil, 60, 
61 

Phelps, Professor, at Andover 
attests reality of phenomena, 
186 ; striking phenomena in 
his father's house in Connecti- 
cut, 299-300 

Power, evolution of, from mus- 
cular to spiritual, 242 - 243 ; 
not physical, producing physi- 
cal effects ; what is it ? 299 

Probabilities and intuitions in 
favour of future life, 224 ff. 

Protestants, oppose science and 
independent thought as bitterly 
as the Catholic Church, 141 ; 
equally deny the salvation of 
virtuous heathens and infants 
dead before the advent of 
Christ, 146-148 ; all teach doc- 
trine of eternal punishment, 
148-149 

Psychical Research, the Society 
for, its institution and member- 
ship, 251-253; Gladstone's 
attitude towards, 253-254 ; its 
aims and work, 254 ff. ; its 
field of research, 257-259 

Ptolemaic scheme of the universe, 
accepted in the Middle Ages, 
114-117; accepted by Dante 
as the framework of his poem, 
ii3jf. ; and by Milton, 136 

Punishment, eternal ; did Jesus 
believe in it? 99 ; doctrine of, 
impious and blasphemous, 101, 
131 ; taught by all churches, 
148-149 

Purgatory in Dante's poem, 124 

Rappings and physical manifes- 
tations defended, 194 ff. ; au- 
thor's first experiences with, 
295 ; later, 305-306 ; difficulty 
in explaining, 306 



Index 



335 



Reason, said to be incompatible 
with religious dogma, 246 

Reincarnation, belief in and 
horror of, of Brahmins and 
Buddhists, 28-31 

Renaissance, the, a reaction 
against the intellectual tyranny 
of the Church, 163 ff. 

Resurrection, true original mean- 
ing of the word, 56, 80 ; Paul's 
doctrine of, 77-80 ; of the 
body, not believed in by Paul, 
79 ; taught by the churches, 
125, 152 f. ; of the body of 
Christ, evidence for, unsatis- 
factory, 200^". 

Rome, ancient, her attitude 
towards Christians political, 
not religious, 86 ; how con- 
quered by Christians, 87 ; 
Christian, her power in the 
Middle Ages, 214 

Sadducees, Hebrew conserva- 
tives, with no belief in a future 
life, 59 

Satan, in Dante's poem, 117— 
118, 123 

Scandinavians, their ideas of 
blessedness in Valhalla, 22 

Scepticism, rise of, as the protest 
of thebest mindsagainstpriestly 
fictions and claims, 37 ff. 

Senses, the physical, sometimes 
dispensed with, 264 ; know- 
ledge arrived at through other 
channels than, 267 ff. ; their 
limitations, 277-279 

Sheol, the Hebrew name for hell, 
the underworld, hades, 48, 50 

Slate-writing, frequently fraud, 
315 ; author's personal expe- 
rience of, apparently genuine, 
ib. ; case of genuine, reported 
by author's friend, 316 

Socrates, his friendly view of 
death, 66-67 

Soul, is man a ? 209^". ; personal, 
conscious existence of, not 
proven, 239 



Souls, unhappy state of in the un- 
derworld, according to ancient 
Greeks and Romans, 26, 31, 32 

Spencer, Herbert, on intuitions 
in favour of future life, 226 

Spirit photographs scientifically 
possible, 279-280 

Spirit-world, the, nearness of, in 
the Gospel, 108-110 

Spiritualism, significance claimed 
for it, 179 ; a reaction against 
agnostic science, 181 ; its be- 
ginnings, 185-186 ; unfavour- 
ably regarded by churches, 
x ^7 ff- ', manifestations of, 
at the beginnings of all great 
religions, 188-190; its own 
worst enemy, 191 ; discredited 
by "fakes and frauds," 193, 
303 ; ethics of, noble and lofty, 
198 

Spiritualists, their excessive 
credulity, 191 ; timidity, 192- 
193 ; certain, Spiritualism's 
worst enemies, 313 

Study of spiritualistic phenom- 
ena, importance of, first real- 
ised by author, 296-298 ; the 
one all-important, 329 

Subliminal consciousness, 257 

Tables and other furniture, ex- 
traordinary performances of, 
299-301 

Table-tipping, 295, 299 

Tartarus, the place of punish- 
ment in the underworld of 
the Greeks and Romans, 35 

Telepathy, what it is, 262-263 ; 
established beyond question, 
307 ; not yet explained, 308 ; 
insufficient to explain certain 
facts, 314 

Tennyson, on future life, 182 

Theosophy, modern name alleged 
to embody some of Buddha's 
ideas, 24 

Tyndall, on the brain, 238 

Underworld, the, or world of 
the dead, as imagined by the 



33& 



Index 



U nderworld — Continued 

Greeks and Romans, 23 ff. , 
2 6 ff-i 35 ! by the Hebrews, 47, 
52, 55-56 (see sheol) ; divided 
into place of reward and of 
punishment — Paradise and 
Gehenna, 58, 61, 72; the place 
where all go, good and bad, 
71-72, 80, 89 

Universalist doctrine held by 
Paul, 82 

Universe, history of, 239^". 

Valhalla, the Scandinavian 
heaven for the souls of brave 
warriors, 22 
Visions of the dying, 309-311 
Wallace, Alfred Russel, his ex- 



perience with spirit photo- 
graphy, 279-280 

Walt Whitman, on future life. 
184 

Wesley Family, disturbed by 
spiritualistic manifestations, 
185-186 ; striking phenomena 
in their house, 299-300 

Whittier, on death, and spirit 
world, 181-182 

World, the other, not strange or 
lonely, 273, nothing known 
about, 273-275 ; whereisit? 
275-277 ; invisible and intangi- 
ble, yet real, 277-279 ; life in, 
what is it like? 287^ ; value of 
earthly gifts and training in, ib. 

Writing, slate, 315-316 ; auto* 
matic, 316-326 




MB ix 



By Minot J. Savage 

LIFE BEYOND DEATH. 

Being a Review of the World's Beliefs on the subject, a 
Consideration of Present Conditions of Thought and Feeling, 
Leading to the Question as to whether it can be Demon- 
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Heaven but the vision of fulfilled desire, 
And hell the shadow of a soul on fire." 

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